Retirement age: Economic outcome or social choice? Pension flexibility and retirement choice

Abstract

This paper considers the conditions which have to be met if an individual is to be able to retire at a date of his own choosing. These conditions arguably are ‘partial pension’ flexibility to supplement earnings from part-time employment, full retirement income adequacy, elimination of age discrimination in employment and a state of health able to sustain an active and productive lifestyle. The paper attempts to identify those developments in social policy (and, by way of an Appendix, in health risk management) during the last 20 years which have the most practical bearing on the realisation of these necessary conditions for individual retirement choice. The paper concludes with a personal view on what may still need to be accomplished through social policy innovation to create these conditions, and how a new retirement paradigm, offering opportunities for work, education and leisure in old age could be of benefit to both the individual and the community. This paper follows ‘Retirement Age: Economic outcome or social choice? Pension policies and retirement practices’ in Pensions, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 148–162, which considers how the notion of retirement age, embodied in pension systems, evolved and how it is related to our concept of ‘old age’.