So. Retirement. Everybody tries to do it. But how long has it been around? Well, a little Googling and it seems that retirement before the mid 1800’s was more or less working until you no longer could and then living with your kids. That’s if you lived ‘below the salt’ as they say. And, it wasn’t that much of a problem for most of human history, because we all didn’t live that long. Old was a lot younger than today. But, if you were a member of the wealthy class with a little money and property, you might find yourself dead at the hand of an ambitious son or daughter who really really didn’t want to wait around for you to die of natural causes for the inheritance clause of your will to kick in.
Now. Did you know there is an Encyclopedia of Aging and the Elderly? Well, see there. Learn something new all the time. Drs. Hampton and Russell wrote it. It seems that in the 1880’s to stave off the encroaching socialism in Germany, Otto Von Bismark introduced a social security system for folks over the age of 65. The consensus of all the articles I read was that Otto was not being generous, he figured that few of those who needed the money were still alive. But if you want to know where age 65 came from, blame it on Otto. Otto’s social security money was a small compensation for not being able to work. Giving people the ability to live.
By 1935 life expectancy in the United States was about 61.7 years. A social security system would not have looked like an ‘entitlement’ but more like a payout from petty cash. The problem was that they were still old people. Meaning they had problems; arthritis, constipation, hearing. You’ve been around old people. You know.
The question is when did it go from stopping working, i.e., retire as defined by the OED: leave your job and stop working, especially because you have reached a particular age, to, well, how can we define it now? When people are retiring from full time work at 55. Starting new businesses. Or devoting time to family. Or their own activities [see Golf, as the most common].
Well, we’ll see…