Spousal Influence on Retirement: His, Her, and Their Perceptions

Abstract

Drawing on a life course perspective, we examine husbands' and wives' perceptions of spousal influence on the decision to retire. Data from 228 couples in the Cornell Retirement and Well-Being Study reveal that retirees and their spouses agree that spouses do influence the retirement decision, but spouses view their role as more minor than the retirees, themselves, see it. For retired husbands and their wives, discussing retirement is most closely associated to seeing the wife as influential. For retired wives and their husbands, the impending retirement of the husband is related to perceptions of his influence on her retirement. Key Words: decision making, influence, perception, retirement, spouse. Most recent retirees in the United States are married (Stanford, Happersett, Morton, Molgaard, & Peddecord, 1991; Szinovacz, 1991), and the timing of retirement for working husbands and wives occurs in relation to one another (Henretta, O'Rand, & Chan, 1993a; Henretta, O'Rand, & Chan, 1993b; Szinovacz, 1989). Even though the decision to retire typically involves both spouses, we know nothing about couples' perceptions of how the role of the spouse affects the decision to retire. Using a life course perspective and data from both retired husbands and their wives and retired wives and their husbands, we investigate subjective perceptions of spousal influence on the retirement decision. THE LIFE COURSE PERSPECTIVE The life course perspective (Elder, 1995; George, 1993) focuses on the importance of major transitions such as retirement. Its key tenets are that early experiences may affect later life choices and transitions (George, 1993; Henretta et al., 1993b; Moen, 1991; O'Rand & Henretta, 1982) and that lives are interdependent (Elder, 1995). This approach points to the context of transitions-for example, how the timing of social change affects individuals and how individuals, in turn, negotiate their environments-as well as the factors shaping these transitions. The timing of retirement increasingly is negotiated between employees and their employers, making it less routine than for earlier cohorts. Moreover, retirement of one spouse occurs in the context of the other spouse's employment or retirement plans, a situation unique to contemporary times. Consider the transition from employment to retirement. Individuals retire, but retirement influences other family members and is influenced by them as well. Over the last 40 years, the timing of retirement and the nature of the transition period accompanying retirement have become more varied because of structural changes, such as the lifting of mandatory retirement policies, and early retirement incentive packages (Henretta, 1992; Kohli, 1994). Changes in the timing of retirement suggest that increasingly this transition is purposefully arranged. Moreover, both spouses may be involved in deciding when a worker retires. Given trends in women's participation in the labor force over the past three decades (Moen, 1992), more wives, like their husbands, are apt to retire from a career now than in the past. Many retirees and their spouses must make a conscious choice to retire and possibly whether to retire together or not and when to do so. Another key contextual consideration is gender. Many studies (Calasanti, 1996; George, Fillenbaum, & Palmore, 1984; Hatch, 1992; Henretta et al., 1993a) suggest that the retirement experience is different for men and women. Whether wives influence their husbands' retirement and whether husbands influence their wives' retirement is open to speculation. COUPLES DECISION MAKING The literature on couples' decision making has focused on earlier life transitions and choices, such as childbearing and geographical moves. But retirement is unlike other couple decisions in that it is the individual employee who must retire. Accordingly, husbands and wives cannot participate equally in the decision-making process (Kenny & Acitelli, 1989). …