In the Public Domain
Journal of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES 1991, Vol.46, No. 1, P9-I4
How Stressful Is Retirement? Findings From the Normative Aging Study Raymond Bosse,1-2 Carolyn M. Aldwin,1 Michael R. Levenson,1 and Kathryn Workman-Daniels' 'Normative Aging Study, Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic, Boston, Massachusetts. 2 Hellenic College, Boston.
The stressfulness of retirement both as a transitional event experienced during the past year and as a life stage was investigated. Transitional stress was assessed using a life events approach, and stage stress using a "hassles" approach. Respondents were 1,516 male participants in the Normative Aging Study, 45% of whom were retired. Among those retiring in the past year, respondents' own and spouse's retirement were rated the least stressful from a list of 31 possible events. Only 30% found retirement stressful. Retirement hassles were also less frequently reported and were rated less stressful than the work hassles of men still in the laborforce. The only consistent predictors of both transitional and stage retirement stress were poor health and family finances; personality did not predict retirement stress.
is generally considered a stressful life R ETIREMENT event (Barron, Streib, & Suchman, 1952; Rosow, 1974) and is often listed on stress inventories (Aldwin, 1990; Holmes & Rahe, 1967; Murrell, Norris, & Hutchins, 1984). The evidence supporting this belief, however, is scant, mostly indirect, and contradictory. For instance, retirement stress has been implicated in matters as serious as the increasingly higher suicide rates of White males beginning at age 65 (Miller, 1979) and in the higher mortality rates among retirees than workers (Adams & Lefebvre, 1981; Haynes, McMichael, & Tyroler, 1978). Others have suggested more moderate consequences of retirement stress, such as retirees having a poor sense of wellbeing and morale (George & Maddox, 1977; Thompson, 1973). Additional indirect arguments have been inferred from reports that retirees miss the money from work (Harris & Associates, 1981) and from reports of substantial reductions in income (Parnes, 1981). Even marital relations have been thought to become difficult following retirement (Hill & Dorfman, 1982; Keating & Cole, 1980; Szinovacz, 1980). Those who question the stressfulness of retirement tend to divide into two groups: those who have attempted to go beyond the indirect evidence and directly inquire into the stressfulness of retirement, and those who doubt the universality of retirement stress and instead have attempted to identify the stressful circumstances of the retirement event or the personal characteristics of retirees for whom retirement is stressful. A study by Matthews, Brown, Davis, and Denton (1982) appears to be one of the few studies that specifically asked retirees about the stressfulness of their retiring. Retirees were asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 the stressfulness of 34 life events which they had personally experienced at some point in their lifetimes. The authors found that retirement ranked 28th among the 34 items listed. A shortcoming of this approach is inadequate recollection and, therefore, possible inaccuracy when asking adult respondents to compare the
stress of a recent event like the death of a spouse with their adolescent experience of leaving home for the first time. The view that stress in retirement is due to certain circumstances of the retirement event or to personal characteristics of the retirees rather than the retirement itself has received greater attention. However, much of that literature continues to provide only indirect evidence against the stressfulness of retirement itself or remains largely theoretical. For instance, Blau, Oser, and Stephens (1982), who found only 17.3% of male and 11.1% of female retirees dissatisfied with retirement, reported that, compared to the satisfied retirees, the dissatisfied retirees had less education, less adequate income, saw friends less often, and reported poorer physical and mental health. Thus, Blau and colleagues indirectly suggest that even for those people who may find retirement stressful, the stress may be due to factors other than the retirement itself. Similarly, Palmore, Burchett, Fillenbaum, George, and Wallman (1985) suggested that "negative consequences" of retirement will depend on the type of outcome measured such as loss of income, the timing of the retirement event, or on "the type of workers" (p. 39). Matthews and Brown (1987), following up on the Matthews et al. (1982) study, attempted to identify specific characteristics of retirees who perceived their retirement to be stressful. They found retirement to be stressful for men whose retirement was unexpected or involuntary, who were of lower socioeconomic status, and who had experienced more stressful events in their lifetime. Although the retirees in their study population were retired from one year to five years, they did not attempt to examine the stress differential effect of length of time retired. A major shortcoming of retirement studies is that they fail to differentiate between retirement as a transition and retirement as a stage. Both the frequency and types of stress are likely to differ, depending upon whether one is examining short- or long-term reactions to retirement. The present study examines both personal and ecological predictors of stress in retirement. Specifically, we examine the extent to P9
P10
BOSSEETAL.
which men find retirement as a life event to be a stressful experience. In addition, we attempt to differentiate between retirement transition stress experienced by recent retirees within one year of changing from work to retirement status, and retirement state stress, which would be a reflection of retirement stress irrespective of its duration. In that context we also examine a much neglected area of retirement research, that is, review and compare the stress of different types of hassles faced in retirement, and how these hassles affect the perceived stressfulness of retirement as a stage. In addition, we pursue a path frequently recommended (see Howard, Marshall, Rechnitzer, Cunningham, and Donner, 1982) but seldom if ever attempted, namely, of relating personality to the perception of retirement as stressful. Specifically, emotionality and extraversion are two major personality traits that may be relevant to the retirement process. There is evidence that emotionality is positively related to overall negative affectivity (Levenson, Aldwin, Bosse, & Spiro, 1988) and to both more frequently reported experiences of stress and heightened reactions to stress (Aldwin, Levenson, Spiro, & Bosse, 1989). Possible relations between extraversion and adaptation to retirement are less clear. Extraverts may have more extensive networks of friends at work and may therefore find leaving that network more stressful. On the other hand, extraverts may also have more extensive friendship networks outside of work and therefore may be able to compensate more readily for the loss of the work network. METHOD
Sample and Procedure The study population was drawn from the participants in the Boston Veterans Administration Normative Aging Study (NAS), a prospective study of normal aging in men initiated in 1963. The 2,280 community-dwelling men accepted into the study were screened from some 6,000 applicants on the basis of predetermined health criteria and geographic stability (Bosse, Ekerdt, & Silbert, 1984). This population, born between 1884 and 1945, has roughly equal numbers of blueand white-collar workers, but is of a slightly higher socioeconomic status than the general population (Ekerdt, Bosse, & Mogey, 1980; Rose, Bosse, & Szretter, 1976). An advantage of these population characteristics is the absence of the usual relationship between older age and lower social class, which can complicate the interpretation of comparisons across adult cohorts. In addition, the low attrition rate in the NAS (currently 8% loss due to dropout) has provided a relatively stable population for almost 25 years. The present study is based on data collected using the Social Survey Questionnaire, which was mailed in June 1985 to the 1,890 then currently active members of the NAS. The men returned 1,565 questionnaires for an 82.8% response rate. Of the respondents, 1,516 men, ranging in age from 39 to 88, had available data for the present study. Of these, 676 (45%) were retired and 840 (55%) were working. Sixteen men were unemployed and were excluded from this study, as well as 33 men who had missing data on the employment status question. For further details regarding data collection procedures, results and comparison of re-
spondents with nonrespondents see Bosse, Aldwin, Levenson, and Ekerdt (1987). The 1,516 men constitute the sample for the stage analyses. Of these, 200 men were available for the transition analyses, having retired in the past year. Measures Employment status. — Employment status was assessed by a 6-point categorical index. Respondents indicated whether they were: (1) retired and not employed at all; (2) retired but still employed part-time; (3) retired but still employed full-time; (4) working part-time and have never retired; (5) working full-time and have never retired; (6) unemployed and have never retired. Men in the first two categories were classified as retirees, and men in categories 3, 4, and 5, as workers. The unemployed men (N = 16) were excluded from the analyses, as mentioned earlier. Stressors. — In addition to employment status, the Social Survey Questionnaire contained several stress measures including stressful life events measured by the Elders Life Stress Inventory (ELSI: Aldwin, 1990) and measures of possible stress from daily hassles in five life domains. The ELSI is a 31-item list of stressful life events. Respondents indicated whether or not they had experienced the events during the past year, including retirement. Respondents were also asked to rate the stressfulness of events on a scale from 1 to 5 ("Not at all stressful" to "Extremely stressful"). For the present study, we chose to examine those men who had indicated on the ELSI that they had experienced retirement in the past year. Similarly, we obtained their rating of how stressful they perceived that experience. In addition, by calculating the relative stressfulness of each event for all the respondents, we were able to rank order the stress levels of the events experienced by the respondents during the previous 12 months. The survey also assessed daily stressors or "hassles" experienced in five life domains: health, marital (which could include marital problems and/or the wife's own difficulties), social relations, household finances, and work or retirement (see Aldwin, 1990). The respondents indicated whether they had experienced a problem in any of these areas during the previous three months and how much they were troubled by that problem on a scale from 1 ("Not troubled at all") to 7 ("The most troubled I've ever been"). These daily stressors have been shown to significantly predict psychological symptoms (Aldwin et al., 1989) and to adequately reflect older men's concerns (Aldwin, 1990). The work or retirement domain hassles provided an additional measure of retirement stress and the possibility of comparing the stressfulness of problems reported by retirees with work problems reported by workers. The other four domain problems (health, marital, social relations, and household finances) will be examined as predictors of retirement stress. Personality. —The personality dimensions had been measured in the NAS population in 1975 as part of a mail survey. The personality questionnaire administered was a short ver-
RETIREMENT STRESS
sion of the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1968), called the EPI-Q (Floderus, 1974). The EPIQ consists of a subset of 18 items from the EPI, forming two subscales that were identified using a Likert analysis based on the strength of item-scale correlations. The 9 dichotomous items of each subscale were simply added, reversing the appropriate items. High scores on these scales indicated greater emotionality or extraversion. Earlier work indicated that this scale predicts both psychological symptoms (Levenson et al., 1988) and the reporting of both life events and hassles in this sample (Aldwin et al., 1989). Further, the fact that the EPI-Q was administered a decade before the current study suggests that the personality measure is not contaminated by the stress of the retirement event. The EPI and the EPI-Q have been shown to be stable over time (Aldwin et al., 1989; Costa & McCrae, 1977). RESULTS
Transition analysis. — Of the men who retired in the previous year, 69.6% said they found retirement "not at all" or "a little" stressful, and 30.4% found it "somewhat," "very," or "extremely" stressful. Furthermore, of the 31 life events listed, a respondent's own retirement had the second lowest mean stressfulness rating (1.95). The only life event that received a lower mean stress rating (1.63) was "spouse's retirement." These retirement stress ratings contrasted with the stress rating of other events experienced in the past year such as death of spouse (4.42), death of son or daughter (4.20), institutionalization of a spouse (4.07), and worsening relations with a child (3.98). Table 1 provides a rank ordering of the 31 life events listed in the ELSI.
Table 1. Frequency and Ratings of Stressful Life Events in the Past Year8 Event 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.
Stage analysis. — Respondents were also asked to identify the most troubling work or retirement hassles they experienced in the last three months. Table 2 compares the type and frequency of problems reported by retirees with those reported by workers. Table 2 reveals that of the 676 retirees who responded to this question, 466 (68.9%) reported no retirement-related problems during the previous three months, while 210 (31.1%) reported a variety of problems. The most frequent problems reported by retirees were boredom (6.2%) and finances (6.1%). In contrast, 545 of the 840 workers (64.9%) reported a work problem, most of which dealt with organizational problems (19.9%), interpersonal relations (13.1%), or planning for retirement (9.4%). Thus, twice as many workers reported having a work problem as retirees who reported a retirement problem. The relative stressfulness of retirement versus work problems was further examined. Table 3 compares the mean stressfulness rating of retirement versus work problems for retirees and workers. Among the workers, 79 men identified anticipated retirement problems as a concern. Because this was not strictly a work problem, and also because this response provided an opportunity to compare anticipated retirement concerns of workers, we entered this group as a separate category in the analysis of variance findings in Table 3. Significant differences were found on mean stress ratings among the three groups, F (2,700) = 10.43, p
Journal of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES 1991, Vol.46, No. 1, P9-I4
How Stressful Is Retirement? Findings From the Normative Aging Study Raymond Bosse,1-2 Carolyn M. Aldwin,1 Michael R. Levenson,1 and Kathryn Workman-Daniels' 'Normative Aging Study, Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic, Boston, Massachusetts. 2 Hellenic College, Boston.
The stressfulness of retirement both as a transitional event experienced during the past year and as a life stage was investigated. Transitional stress was assessed using a life events approach, and stage stress using a "hassles" approach. Respondents were 1,516 male participants in the Normative Aging Study, 45% of whom were retired. Among those retiring in the past year, respondents' own and spouse's retirement were rated the least stressful from a list of 31 possible events. Only 30% found retirement stressful. Retirement hassles were also less frequently reported and were rated less stressful than the work hassles of men still in the laborforce. The only consistent predictors of both transitional and stage retirement stress were poor health and family finances; personality did not predict retirement stress.
is generally considered a stressful life R ETIREMENT event (Barron, Streib, & Suchman, 1952; Rosow, 1974) and is often listed on stress inventories (Aldwin, 1990; Holmes & Rahe, 1967; Murrell, Norris, & Hutchins, 1984). The evidence supporting this belief, however, is scant, mostly indirect, and contradictory. For instance, retirement stress has been implicated in matters as serious as the increasingly higher suicide rates of White males beginning at age 65 (Miller, 1979) and in the higher mortality rates among retirees than workers (Adams & Lefebvre, 1981; Haynes, McMichael, & Tyroler, 1978). Others have suggested more moderate consequences of retirement stress, such as retirees having a poor sense of wellbeing and morale (George & Maddox, 1977; Thompson, 1973). Additional indirect arguments have been inferred from reports that retirees miss the money from work (Harris & Associates, 1981) and from reports of substantial reductions in income (Parnes, 1981). Even marital relations have been thought to become difficult following retirement (Hill & Dorfman, 1982; Keating & Cole, 1980; Szinovacz, 1980). Those who question the stressfulness of retirement tend to divide into two groups: those who have attempted to go beyond the indirect evidence and directly inquire into the stressfulness of retirement, and those who doubt the universality of retirement stress and instead have attempted to identify the stressful circumstances of the retirement event or the personal characteristics of retirees for whom retirement is stressful. A study by Matthews, Brown, Davis, and Denton (1982) appears to be one of the few studies that specifically asked retirees about the stressfulness of their retiring. Retirees were asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 the stressfulness of 34 life events which they had personally experienced at some point in their lifetimes. The authors found that retirement ranked 28th among the 34 items listed. A shortcoming of this approach is inadequate recollection and, therefore, possible inaccuracy when asking adult respondents to compare the
stress of a recent event like the death of a spouse with their adolescent experience of leaving home for the first time. The view that stress in retirement is due to certain circumstances of the retirement event or to personal characteristics of the retirees rather than the retirement itself has received greater attention. However, much of that literature continues to provide only indirect evidence against the stressfulness of retirement itself or remains largely theoretical. For instance, Blau, Oser, and Stephens (1982), who found only 17.3% of male and 11.1% of female retirees dissatisfied with retirement, reported that, compared to the satisfied retirees, the dissatisfied retirees had less education, less adequate income, saw friends less often, and reported poorer physical and mental health. Thus, Blau and colleagues indirectly suggest that even for those people who may find retirement stressful, the stress may be due to factors other than the retirement itself. Similarly, Palmore, Burchett, Fillenbaum, George, and Wallman (1985) suggested that "negative consequences" of retirement will depend on the type of outcome measured such as loss of income, the timing of the retirement event, or on "the type of workers" (p. 39). Matthews and Brown (1987), following up on the Matthews et al. (1982) study, attempted to identify specific characteristics of retirees who perceived their retirement to be stressful. They found retirement to be stressful for men whose retirement was unexpected or involuntary, who were of lower socioeconomic status, and who had experienced more stressful events in their lifetime. Although the retirees in their study population were retired from one year to five years, they did not attempt to examine the stress differential effect of length of time retired. A major shortcoming of retirement studies is that they fail to differentiate between retirement as a transition and retirement as a stage. Both the frequency and types of stress are likely to differ, depending upon whether one is examining short- or long-term reactions to retirement. The present study examines both personal and ecological predictors of stress in retirement. Specifically, we examine the extent to P9
P10
BOSSEETAL.
which men find retirement as a life event to be a stressful experience. In addition, we attempt to differentiate between retirement transition stress experienced by recent retirees within one year of changing from work to retirement status, and retirement state stress, which would be a reflection of retirement stress irrespective of its duration. In that context we also examine a much neglected area of retirement research, that is, review and compare the stress of different types of hassles faced in retirement, and how these hassles affect the perceived stressfulness of retirement as a stage. In addition, we pursue a path frequently recommended (see Howard, Marshall, Rechnitzer, Cunningham, and Donner, 1982) but seldom if ever attempted, namely, of relating personality to the perception of retirement as stressful. Specifically, emotionality and extraversion are two major personality traits that may be relevant to the retirement process. There is evidence that emotionality is positively related to overall negative affectivity (Levenson, Aldwin, Bosse, & Spiro, 1988) and to both more frequently reported experiences of stress and heightened reactions to stress (Aldwin, Levenson, Spiro, & Bosse, 1989). Possible relations between extraversion and adaptation to retirement are less clear. Extraverts may have more extensive networks of friends at work and may therefore find leaving that network more stressful. On the other hand, extraverts may also have more extensive friendship networks outside of work and therefore may be able to compensate more readily for the loss of the work network. METHOD
Sample and Procedure The study population was drawn from the participants in the Boston Veterans Administration Normative Aging Study (NAS), a prospective study of normal aging in men initiated in 1963. The 2,280 community-dwelling men accepted into the study were screened from some 6,000 applicants on the basis of predetermined health criteria and geographic stability (Bosse, Ekerdt, & Silbert, 1984). This population, born between 1884 and 1945, has roughly equal numbers of blueand white-collar workers, but is of a slightly higher socioeconomic status than the general population (Ekerdt, Bosse, & Mogey, 1980; Rose, Bosse, & Szretter, 1976). An advantage of these population characteristics is the absence of the usual relationship between older age and lower social class, which can complicate the interpretation of comparisons across adult cohorts. In addition, the low attrition rate in the NAS (currently 8% loss due to dropout) has provided a relatively stable population for almost 25 years. The present study is based on data collected using the Social Survey Questionnaire, which was mailed in June 1985 to the 1,890 then currently active members of the NAS. The men returned 1,565 questionnaires for an 82.8% response rate. Of the respondents, 1,516 men, ranging in age from 39 to 88, had available data for the present study. Of these, 676 (45%) were retired and 840 (55%) were working. Sixteen men were unemployed and were excluded from this study, as well as 33 men who had missing data on the employment status question. For further details regarding data collection procedures, results and comparison of re-
spondents with nonrespondents see Bosse, Aldwin, Levenson, and Ekerdt (1987). The 1,516 men constitute the sample for the stage analyses. Of these, 200 men were available for the transition analyses, having retired in the past year. Measures Employment status. — Employment status was assessed by a 6-point categorical index. Respondents indicated whether they were: (1) retired and not employed at all; (2) retired but still employed part-time; (3) retired but still employed full-time; (4) working part-time and have never retired; (5) working full-time and have never retired; (6) unemployed and have never retired. Men in the first two categories were classified as retirees, and men in categories 3, 4, and 5, as workers. The unemployed men (N = 16) were excluded from the analyses, as mentioned earlier. Stressors. — In addition to employment status, the Social Survey Questionnaire contained several stress measures including stressful life events measured by the Elders Life Stress Inventory (ELSI: Aldwin, 1990) and measures of possible stress from daily hassles in five life domains. The ELSI is a 31-item list of stressful life events. Respondents indicated whether or not they had experienced the events during the past year, including retirement. Respondents were also asked to rate the stressfulness of events on a scale from 1 to 5 ("Not at all stressful" to "Extremely stressful"). For the present study, we chose to examine those men who had indicated on the ELSI that they had experienced retirement in the past year. Similarly, we obtained their rating of how stressful they perceived that experience. In addition, by calculating the relative stressfulness of each event for all the respondents, we were able to rank order the stress levels of the events experienced by the respondents during the previous 12 months. The survey also assessed daily stressors or "hassles" experienced in five life domains: health, marital (which could include marital problems and/or the wife's own difficulties), social relations, household finances, and work or retirement (see Aldwin, 1990). The respondents indicated whether they had experienced a problem in any of these areas during the previous three months and how much they were troubled by that problem on a scale from 1 ("Not troubled at all") to 7 ("The most troubled I've ever been"). These daily stressors have been shown to significantly predict psychological symptoms (Aldwin et al., 1989) and to adequately reflect older men's concerns (Aldwin, 1990). The work or retirement domain hassles provided an additional measure of retirement stress and the possibility of comparing the stressfulness of problems reported by retirees with work problems reported by workers. The other four domain problems (health, marital, social relations, and household finances) will be examined as predictors of retirement stress. Personality. —The personality dimensions had been measured in the NAS population in 1975 as part of a mail survey. The personality questionnaire administered was a short ver-
RETIREMENT STRESS
sion of the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1968), called the EPI-Q (Floderus, 1974). The EPIQ consists of a subset of 18 items from the EPI, forming two subscales that were identified using a Likert analysis based on the strength of item-scale correlations. The 9 dichotomous items of each subscale were simply added, reversing the appropriate items. High scores on these scales indicated greater emotionality or extraversion. Earlier work indicated that this scale predicts both psychological symptoms (Levenson et al., 1988) and the reporting of both life events and hassles in this sample (Aldwin et al., 1989). Further, the fact that the EPI-Q was administered a decade before the current study suggests that the personality measure is not contaminated by the stress of the retirement event. The EPI and the EPI-Q have been shown to be stable over time (Aldwin et al., 1989; Costa & McCrae, 1977). RESULTS
Transition analysis. — Of the men who retired in the previous year, 69.6% said they found retirement "not at all" or "a little" stressful, and 30.4% found it "somewhat," "very," or "extremely" stressful. Furthermore, of the 31 life events listed, a respondent's own retirement had the second lowest mean stressfulness rating (1.95). The only life event that received a lower mean stress rating (1.63) was "spouse's retirement." These retirement stress ratings contrasted with the stress rating of other events experienced in the past year such as death of spouse (4.42), death of son or daughter (4.20), institutionalization of a spouse (4.07), and worsening relations with a child (3.98). Table 1 provides a rank ordering of the 31 life events listed in the ELSI.
Table 1. Frequency and Ratings of Stressful Life Events in the Past Year8 Event 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.
Stage analysis. — Respondents were also asked to identify the most troubling work or retirement hassles they experienced in the last three months. Table 2 compares the type and frequency of problems reported by retirees with those reported by workers. Table 2 reveals that of the 676 retirees who responded to this question, 466 (68.9%) reported no retirement-related problems during the previous three months, while 210 (31.1%) reported a variety of problems. The most frequent problems reported by retirees were boredom (6.2%) and finances (6.1%). In contrast, 545 of the 840 workers (64.9%) reported a work problem, most of which dealt with organizational problems (19.9%), interpersonal relations (13.1%), or planning for retirement (9.4%). Thus, twice as many workers reported having a work problem as retirees who reported a retirement problem. The relative stressfulness of retirement versus work problems was further examined. Table 3 compares the mean stressfulness rating of retirement versus work problems for retirees and workers. Among the workers, 79 men identified anticipated retirement problems as a concern. Because this was not strictly a work problem, and also because this response provided an opportunity to compare anticipated retirement concerns of workers, we entered this group as a separate category in the analysis of variance findings in Table 3. Significant differences were found on mean stress ratings among the three groups, F (2,700) = 10.43, p
