Attitude towards retirement: a study of state employed females of Iowa

Abstract

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION Occupational retirement was an important issue of the last decade. People throughout history have aged, but only within the last few decades have most persons in a society been able to retire. For example, in 1900, 68.4% of men 65 years and over were in the labor force. In 1960, only 30.5% of men of that age were still employed, while by 1970, the proportion was down to 25% (Jaffe, 1972a). While labor force participation of older males has been declining, the rate for older females has been increasing (Cain, 1966; Cohen, 1969). In the first half of this century, the labor force participation of women 45 and older has more than tripled from 14.1% in 1900 to 47.9% in 1958 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1973a). By 1970, nearly half of all married females aged 45 to 54 and over one-third of those between 55 and 64 years were gainfully employed (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1973a; see Table Al, Appendix C). The long-term rise in labor force participation of females in the U.S. has been well documented in numerous studies using both national census and survey data. Selected sources document these trends-Waite and Stolzenberg (1976), Oppenheimer (1970), and Sweet (1973). Over the past three decades the major increase in labor force par ticipation has been among married females, whose employment rate rose from 20 to over 44% between 1947 and 1975. During the same period there was little change among unmarried women. Sheppard (1976) believes that a continued increase in the labor force participation of older females can be expected in the future. One factor that very well may contribute to this is the dramatic and rather surprising increase in families headed 2 by females (Ross and Sawhlll, 1975). During the past two decades, female-headed families have grown almost ten times as fast as families headed by a husband-father (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975). To these women, employment can be Just as important as it is to males. Therefore, termination of gainful employment can be psychologically damaging and financially disastrous. General Research Problem Scientific investigations of the labor force participation of females are not new to social science. For decades, researchers interested in family have grappled with issues pertaining to the woman's involvement in employment outside the home and its implications for the spouse and children. More recently, the occupational retirement of males and its consequences for the individual as well as for the family unit have re ceived tremendous attention from social gerontologists and others inter ested in retirement. Employment and occupational retirement are interrelated concepts which can be seen as two ends of a continuum. Both men and women enter the work force and, therefore, the inevitability of retirement exists equally for both. Some interesting but contradicting observations with regard to the employment-retirement issue can be made, however. First, when employment and retirement are studied as interrelated concepts, the subjects usually have been male...