Reconceptualizing retirement: A status-based approach

Abstract

The one thing on which essentially all retirement scholars agree is that there is no generally accepted definition of the term "retirement." Hence, it is not surprising that a plethora of competing models of the stages of retirement has been generated. To cut this Gordian knot, this paper proposes that the concept of statuses, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive or sequential, replace the idea of stages. Statuses better reflect observed human behavior and are more open to multicultural application, thus facilitating retirement research and clinical practice. The retirement statuses proposed here, which can exist in any combination or sequence, are retrenchment, exploration, try-out, involvement, reconsideration, and exiting (forming the acronym RETIRE).

Full text

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RECONCEPTUALIZING RETIREMENT: A STATUS-BASED APPROACH
David B. Hershenson
University of Massachusetts Boston
University of Maryland
Address: 70 Park Street, Apt. 42
Brookline, MA 02446
Email: dhershen@umd.edu

Abstract
The one thing on which essentially all retirement scholars agree is that there is no generally
accepted definition of the term “retirement.” Hence, it is not surprising that a plethora of
competing models of the stages of retirement has been generated. To cut this Gordian knot, this
paper proposes that the concept of statuses, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive or
sequential, replace the idea of stages. Statuses better reflect observed human behavior and are
more open to multicultural application, thus facilitating retirement research and clinical practice.
The retirement statuses proposed here, which can exist in any combination or sequence, are:
Retrenchment, Exploration, Try-out, Involvement, Reconsideration, and Exiting (forming the
acronym RETIRE).
Key words: retirement, retirement theory, status-based model, retirement statuses

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RECONCEPTUALIZING RETIREMENT: A STATUS-BASED APPROACH
“In the beginning, there was no retirement. There were no old people. In the Stone Age,
everyone was fully employed until age 20, by which time nearly everyone was dead …”
(Weisman, 1999, p. 1). Over the course of the past 10,000 years, more and more people have
been living further and further beyond their time as reproductive and economic contributors,
eventually growing numerous enough to form a distinct population cohort. In the past 150 years,
individuals in that cohort who formerly earned an income have come to be labeled “retired.” Not
surprisingly for a term of such recent origin and widespread use, there is little agreement on what
this term means. As Ekerdt (2010, p. 70) stated, “The designation of retirement status is
famously ambiguous because there are multiple overlapping criteria by which someone might be
called retired, including career cessation, reduced work effort, pension receipt, or self-report.”
Denton and Spencer (2009, p. 63) noted, “The confusing array of definitions reflects the practical
problem that underlies the concept of retirement. It is essentially a negative notion, a notion of
what people are not doing – namely, that they are not working.” In his chapter entitled “From
retirement to ‘productive aging’ and back to work again,” Bass (2011) called even Denton and
Spencer’s negative criterion into question. Wang, Henkens, and van Solinge’s (2011) review of
the literature on psychological adjustment to retirement similarly concluded that the meaning of
retirement was multifaceted, changed over time, and could no longer be defined as a single, one-
time event. McVittie and Goodall (2012, p. 75) further noted, “As cultural understandings of
retirement change, so too do the forms of individual activity that come to be recognized as
comprising retirement.” Beehr and Bowling (2013) concluded that until the various competing
definitions of retirement are empirically tested, their relevance and predictive validity remain
unknown.
Given this ambiguity as to the definition of retirement, it is not surprising that attempts to
define the stages of retirement have arrived at widely differing conclusions. Richardson (1993)
posited three phases: the anticipatory phase of preretirement, the phase of deciding to and
actually retiring, and the phase of postretirement adjustment. Feldman and Beehr (2011) also
proposed a three-phase model of retirement decision making: imagining the future, assessing the
past to decide when to let go, and putting one’s retirement plan into action. Wolfson (2009)

suggested a four stage model: preretirement, active pursuit of retirement dreams, slowing down,
and letting go of expectations and control. Victor (1994) identified five stages in the transition to
retirement: growing interest in retirement as it approaches, initial euphoria, some stress,
adjusting to a new lifestyle, and settling down. The Editorial Staff of the Retirement Income
Journal (2010) listed six emotional stages of retirement: imagination (6-15 years before
retirement), hesitation (3-5 years before retirement), anticipation (2 years before retirement),
realization (the first year of retirement), reorientation (2-15 years after retirement), and
reconciliation (16+ years after retirement). Similarly, Cussen (2015), also a financial planner,
delineated six stages of retirement: preretirement planning, the big day of retiring, the
honeymoon phase of freedom, disenchantment, a reorientation phase of building a new identity,
and creating and following a new routine. Finally, Atchley (2000), a social scientist specializing
in aging, posited a six stage process: preretirement (having two phases, remote and near, and
involving both disengaging from the workplace and planning for the future), retirement (with
three possible paths: “honeymoon” time to try previously unattainable activities; “immediate
retirement routine,” continuing all prior activities other than employment; or “rest and
relaxation”), disenchantment, reorientation (creating a new, satisfying lifestyle), retirement
routine (living that lifestyle), and termination of retirement (due to incapacitation). Although
most social scientists follow Atchley’s model, there is no more consensus on the stages of
retirement than there is on its definition.
Given this state of affairs, this paper suggests a different approach to conceptualizing the
structure and course of retirement that circumvents many of the problems inherent in trying to
define the stages of a protean construct like retirement. This alternative approach replaces the
idea of stages of retirement with Helms’s (1995) construct of statuses. Helms developed this
construct as a better explanatory principle for her theories of white and non-white racial identity
development than the stage models she and others had employed in the past. Her rationale for
making this conceptual shift was that, unlike stages, statuses are not necessarily mutually
exclusive or sequential and so more validly represent empirical observations of people’s
behavior. That is, a person could be in more than one status at the same time and did not have to
have completed any other status as a prerequisite to being in any given status. Moreover,
because stages are largely defined by their cultural context, statuses could be more applicable
multiculturally. Helms and Piper (1994) suggested that the idea of statuses could also be

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productively applied to the career development process. This suggestion was implemented by
Beveridge, Craddock, Liesener, Stapleton, and Hershenson (2002) and by Hershenson (2005).
Given the demonstrated utility of this model in the analysis of racial identity development and of
career behavior, this paper will apply the construct of statuses to an analysis of retirement
behavior.
The Six Statuses of Retirement
This paper posits that the phenomenon of retirement can best be conceptualized as
including six statuses, which can coexist in any combination or sequence. These statuses are:
Retrenchment, Exploration, Try-out, Involvement, Reconsideration, and Exiting, which form the
acronym RETIRE. These statuses were identified by applying two criteria: (1) that they could
each be found in at least some members of a variety of economically and culturally diverse
population groups, and (2) that there does not appear to be any retirement behavior exhibited by
members of any of these diverse groups that does not fall within one of these statuses. There is,
of course, no implication that every individual necessarily experiences all six statuses in the
course of her or his retirement.
The first of these statuses, Retrenchment, follows from the definition of retirement and
involves fully or partially cutting back on one’s principal employment (which can include
homemaking). Retrenchment can be voluntary or involuntary, such as being laid off or
becoming disabled. A partial retrenchment may later become total. While Retrenchment is a
marker status for retirement, it is not necessarily the first status a retiree enters. Other than those
who enter the status involuntarily without warning (for example, an unanticipated layoff or a
disabling trauma), most people have thought about and possibly tried out some aspects of their
retirement plans in anticipation of the event. Thus, Exploration and possibly Try-out may well
precede Retrenchment. Retrenchment may also involve a change in lifestyle, either intentionally
sought or involuntarily imposed by the concomitant change in one’s economic or social status.
Exploration status involves thinking about and gathering information on possible
activities and lifestyles in which to engage during retirement. Simon (1995) suggested that
persons may develop a personal narrative script that can become their paradigm for deciding
which retirement activities are likely to satisfy them. Another factor that may shape people’s
search for options is their retirement self-efficacy (the personal belief that one has the skills and

abilities needed to succeed in particular retirement activities). Carter and Cook (1995) concluded
that retirement self-efficacy “is an important determinant of anticipated and of experienced
retirement satisfaction” (p. 77). Exploration may also be affected by the person’s energy level,
adventurousness, and longevity expectations.
Try-out status involves selecting and trying out options for retirement activities
(including inactivity) and lifestyles. Once again, retirement self-efficacy may affect which
options prove successful. Related to this, Donaldson, Earl, and Muratore (2010, p. 279) found
that “[a]fter controlling for the effects of demographics and health, a higher personal sense of
mastery … significantly predicted adjustment to retirement.” Try-out status for any given
activity lasts only until a determination has been made to pursue or to reject that activity. This is
usually, but not necessarily, a short process. The success of any try-out is inevitably affected by
the intrapersonal, family, and community supports for and barriers to that activity or lifestyle.
Involvement status is the retiree’s long-term participation in those retirement activities
and lifestyles that have been successfully vetted by try-out or have been carried over from the
preretirement period. Involvement status may last for decades, for as long as the person finds
these activities or lifestyles to be both doable and satisfying. As Harper and Shoffner (2004) and
Foley and Lytle (2015) suggested, the idea that satisfactoriness and satisfaction determine tenure
in a retirement activity, derived from the Theory of Work Adjustment (Dawis, England, &
Lofquist, 1964), offers a useful basis for understanding how long the involvement status will
continue.
When involvement loses its allure or attractive new options present themselves,
Reconsideration status is activated. It involves deciding to continue on one’s present path or to
explore or try out a new activity or lifestyle. Reconsideration may be voluntary or imposed by
circumstances. Inevitably, reconsideration decisions are influenced by the retiree’s perceived
options and by his or her energy level, adventurousness, living situation, longevity expectations,
and self-efficacy beliefs.
Finally, Exiting status entails the voluntary or imposed termination of a retirement
activity or lifestyle. It includes the decision to terminate and the action of terminating.
Frequently, exiting is an extended process rather than an instantaneous action. It may entail

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grieving or celebration, depending on the retiree’s feeling about the activity or lifestyle to be
exited. A return to full-time employment entails exiting retirement.
As was indicated earlier, a person can be in multiple statuses simultaneously. For
example, on his or her day of partial retirement from full-time employment [Retrenchment], a
person may sign up for training as a docent at a local museum [Try-out], while thinking about
additional possible activities [Exploration] that fit with the decision to continue to work part-time
[Involvement] but to resign from the board of the Chamber of Commerce at the end of her or his
current term [Exiting]. Having briefly defined the six statuses of retirement, factors that can
affect all six statuses will be discussed.
General Factors Affecting All Six Statuses
Osborne (2012) cataloged the psychological effects of retiring as including identity
disruption, decision paralysis, diminished self-trust, experiencing a postretirement void, coping
with the simultaneous impact of aging and retirement, and death anxiety; all while trying to
develop a retirement life structure and searching for meaningful engagement in society. Clearly,
all of these issues can affect each of the six retirement statuses. Other factors that can affect all
of the statuses include the individual’s health (Donaldson, Earl, & Muratore, 2010; Oksanen &
Virtanen, 2012), personal adjustment, and retirement coping style; the opportunity structure of
the retiree’s environment; and the societal expectations and supports for retirees.
As for personal adjustment, the more satisfied a person has been with her or his
preretirement work and living situations, the more likely she or he will be to retain or to try to
replicate those situations in retirement. As Shaw, Patterson, Semple, and Grant (1998, p. 393)
stated, “A high level of intrinsic job satisfaction may delay the decision to retire.” Also relevant
to personal adjustment, Donaldson, Earl, and Muratore (2010) found that higher income and
better physical and psychological health were related to better retirement adjustment. Wong and
Earl (2009) similarly found that better psychological health, higher income, and being married
predicted better retirement adjustment. Several studies examined gender differences in factors
affecting adjustment to retirement: Kubicek, Korunka, Raymo, and Hoonakker (2011) found
significant gender differences, but Reitzes and Mutran (2004) found only limited gender effects.
Several taxonomies of retirement coping styles used by retirees have been proposed (Hornstein
& Wapner, 1985; Walker, Kimmel, & Price, 1981). The most recent such taxonomy, by

Schlossberg (2004), outlined five coping styles: Adventurers, who seek to start something new;
Continuers, who wish to keep doing what they had done in their preretirement; Searchers, who
energetically seek a comfortable option by trial and error; Easy Gliders, who want to relax and
are content to go wherever life takes them; and Retreaters, who give up and disengage.
Factors affecting all six statuses that have external sources but internal effects include the
person’s role expectations concerning retirement (Richardson, 1993), her or his reference group’s
attitudes toward retirement and retirees (Feldman & Beehr, 2011), and family obligations such as
the need to coordinate with a spouse’s agenda or to be available for active grandparenting
(Raymo & Sweeney, 2006). Purely external factors affecting all statuses include local and
national economic and labor market conditions and the availability of community resources for
senior learning, work, and leisure activities.
Summary Outline of Factors Affecting Statuses
To facilitate research and potential practice applications of a status-based approach to
reconceptualizing retirement, the considerations raised in the prior two sections of this paper
have been assembled into the following table. There are doubtlessly numerous other
considerations that have yet to be recognized and added to this matrix.
INSERT TABLE 1 HERE
Advantages and Limitations of a Status-based Approach
A status-based conceptualization of retirement overcomes many of the deficits of existing
approaches for both research and clinical practice. As to research, Wang and Shi (2014)
indicated that there are currently four conceptualizations of retirement, each of which has
inherent limitations. The first of these conceptualizations, retirement as decision making, is
limited by the fact that retirement decisions are not always voluntary. The second
conceptualization, retirement as a longitudinal developmental process characterized by
increasing adjustment, is subject to disruption by precipitous declines in health or financial
status. The third conceptualization, retirement as a career development stage, is limited by older
workers’ decline in job-related capacities and by employers’ age bias and their switch to new
technologies and business models, such as downsizing and outsourcing. Finally, the fourth
approach, empirical operationalization of retirement, is limited by the possibility of creating a

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mismatch between the retirement concept and how it is operationalized that produces misleading
conclusions. Because of its lack of preconceptions as to an individual’s statuses, the model
proposed here avoids the pitfalls of the existing stage and, to some extent, process models
discussed by Wang and Shi. First, a status model more accurately reflects human behavior
because it assumes that processes are not necessarily regular or homogeneous across individuals.
Second, it avoids many of the ambiguities that arise in defining stages. For example, when does
the preretirement stage begin – at conception, at birth, or when the last child leaves home and the
dog dies? By acknowledging that statuses can occur and reoccur at any point in a person’s
retirement, it allows greater flexibility in conceptualizing and tracking retirement changes over
time, thereby offering greater opportunity for longitudinal studies. The greater flexibility of a
status-based approach also provides the opportunity for multiple processes to co-exist, to affect
each other, and to differentially affect different statuses.
The status model proposed here can be contextualized within the broader field of aging
studies in that each status can be related to one or more central constructs in some of the most
widely recognized general theories of aging. Retrenchment and Exiting reflect the withdrawal
aspect of disengagement theory (Cumming & Henry, 1961). Conversely, Exploration, Try-out,
and Involvement, as growth-oriented statuses, can be associated with activity theory (Knapp,
1977). Exploration and Try-out also correspond with Baltes and Baltes’ (1990) process of
selective optimization, that is, seeking ‘domains that are of high priority and involve a
convergence of environmental demands and individual motivation, skills, and biological
capacity” (pp. 21-22) and that maximize one’s quality of life. As the status concerned with long-
term participation in activities and lifestyles, Involvement references continuity theory (Atchley,
1989). Finally, Reconsideration can be associated with Baltes and Baltes’ process of
compensation, which “becomes operative when specific behavioral capacities are lost or are
reduced below a standard required for adequate functioning” (p. 22).
In terms of its application in retirement counseling practice, a status model makes issues
of retirement and ways of addressing them easier to specify. A status model increases the
counselor’s awareness that any status may be present and active long after the client first entered
retirement and that coexisting statuses may create both problems and potential solutions for
them. This model suggests that since many retirement problems are multifaceted, a targeted

combination of interventions can be employed to address the specific combination of status
issues that the client is presenting. Finally, a status model allows for the possibility of
establishing evidence-based targeted interventions and practices.
While the status-based approach to reconceptualizing retirement appears to address some
of the problems inherent in stage models, it raises its own set of problems. Is the concept of
statuses as culture-bound in its own way as the concept of stages? Are the six statuses identified
in this paper the only ones that exist? Are these six statuses each discrete, independent entities?
What is the impact of health issues, disabilities, poverty, social status, cultural norms and biases,
local opportunity structure, and environmental supports and barriers on the presence and nature
of each status? As Beehr and Bowling (2013) noted, only as these retirement concepts are
empirically tested can their validity and utility be known.

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Table 1. Status Aspects and Effects
Aspects of Status Effects on Activities Effects on Lifestyle
RETRENCHMENT
Full or Part?
Voluntary or Involuntary?
General Internal Influences (health,
personal
adjustment, coping style)?
General External Influences (social values,
family obligations, economic conditions,
local community resources and barriers)?
EXPLORATION
Pre- or Post-Retrenchment?
Contemplation or Action?
Specific Influences (energy level, longevity
expectations, adventurousness, etc.)?
General Internal and External Influences?
TRY-OUT
Pre- or Post-Retrenchment?

Supports?
Barriers?
General Internal and External Influences?
INVOLVEMENT
Doable?
Supports?
Barriers?
Satisfying?
Length of Tenure?
General Internal and External Influences?
RECONSIDERATION
Voluntary or Imposed?
Specific Influences (energy level, etc.)?
Perceived Options?
General Internal and External Influences?
EXITING
Voluntary or Imposed?
Sudden or considered?
Attached Affect?
General Internal and External Influences?