When, during our lifetimes, we work
Other recent changes are the ages at which key life-events take place, including those related to work. Put simply, as well as living longer, the ages at which people are completing full-time education, becoming settled within a specific occupation, getting married, having children, and retiring are all getting later. These trends have been happening for some time and can be seen across the whole of Europe.
Sociologist Ken Roberts has noted that the average age at which people become established and settled within a specific type of work is sometime in the late 20’s. Formal full-time education is being completed later. Recent studies of the career progression of graduates shows that many take a number of years to become established within their chosen field.
Just as the start of our working lives has become more of a gradual process, so retirement in the future is expected to be not such a sudden finish. It has been shown to be detrimental to health for those close to a fixed retirement age to work extremely hard in their last few years -often to maintain pension entitlement - then to suddenly stop working entirely.
Demographic pressures are forcing the government to consider raising retirement ages. It has been calculated that if the UK retirement age had the same relationship to life expectancy as in 1936, it would currently stand at 79. Recent radical changes to the financial regulations around pensions allow much greater flexibility of retirement and open the possibility of a much smoother transition, in which part-time working is combined with part-time retirement.