Transitions to retirement – Learning to redesign one’s lifestyle

Abstract

With the ongoing political debate in many western countries on retirement age and ways of designing the transition into the post-professional phase of life, the transition from work to retirement seems to be on the agenda again. The research questions guiding this study are: how do older workers plan their retirement and how do they prepare themselves for it? Which facets of their current conditions of living and working and which biographical aspects have an impact on the way they learn and prepare for this new phase of life? How do retired adults sum up the transition and the significance of learning related to this process? To better understand the ways older workers prepare themselves for this next phase of life, on the one hand, and to contrast their expectations and plans with the actual experiences of those who already went through this transitional process, we collected data from 24 qualitative interviews and from a questionnaire answered by a representative quantitative sample of German adults aged 50 to 69. Some of the initial results derived from this data are presented here. We provide some empirical insight into the transition to retirement and, based on this, point to possible ways of supporting older workers faced with this transition through educational programs.