Abstract
The twentieth century has brought with it a radical shift in the relation between aging and work. Being economically active until the final stages of life or at least as long as one’s bodily and mental performance allowed one to do so was the rule in pre-industrial Europe and throughout the nineteenth century. The twentieth century, in contrast, has been experiencing a continuing process of dissociation of work and old age, which consists of three interrelated dimensions: firstly, the emergence of retirement as a normal and universal life phase and a major element of the modern institutionalized life course; secondly, a considerable and continuing prolongation of retirement due to a long-lasting trend of declining labor force participation by elderly men and women; and thirdly, an increasingly positive evaluation of a specific retirement culture in which a wide variety of leisure activities plays an important if not the most important role.
Parts of this chapter make use of earlier publications on the history of work and retirement, particularly of Ehmer (1996) and Ehmer (2009), and strongly benefited from my fellowship at the International Research Center Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
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Ehmer, J. (2015). Work versus Leisure: Historical Roots of the Dissociation of Work and Later Life in Twentieth-Century Europe. In: Torp, C. (eds) Challenges of Aging. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283177_8
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