Myth of the industrial scrap heap: A revisionist view of turn-of-the-century American retirement

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050700016004
• 发表日期: 1996
• 页码: 5-38
• 关键词: labor-force participation; older americans; men

摘要

Using the census survival method to calculate net flows across employment states between 1900 and 1910, we find that approximately one-fifth of all men who reached the age of 55 eventually retired before death. Many of these retirees appear to have planned their withdrawal from paid employment by accumulating assets, becoming self-employed, and then liquidating their assets to provide a stream of income to finance consumption in old age. This ''modern'' retirement behavior has important implications for the economic history of capital and labor markets, of saving and investment, of insurance and pensions, and of the family economy.