The structure of post-retirement adaptation for recent and longer-term women retirees

A review of the literature on adjustment to retirement reveals that many investigators have studied retirees together as a group, regardless of the amount of time they have been retired. The present study questions the validity of that approach. The post-retirement adaptation of a group of 59 relatively recent (3-6 years) and 122 longer-term (7 + years) retirees was compared via canonical correlation analyses. The results showed that the structure of post-retirement adaptation differed for the two groups. The relatively recent retirees' adaptational variate emphasized satisfaction with retirement (.990) and showed weaker loadings on self-esteem (.475) and happiness (.374). Corresponding factor loadings for the longer-term retirees were -.340, .827 and .494, respectively. Thus, retirement satisfaction (or job deprivation) was a more salient aspect of the recent retirees' adaptation while longer-term adaptation was a more general phenomenon. These results suggest that the inclusion of longer-term retirees in retirement research may obscure the important correlates of adaptation to this life change.