The structure of post-retirement adaptation for recent and longer-term women retirees

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Abstract
A review of the literature on adjustment to retirement reveals that many investigators have studied retirees together as a group, regardless of the amount of time they have been retired. The present study questions the validity of that approach. The post-retirement adaptation of a group of 59 relatively recent (3-6 yr) and 122 longer-term (7+ yr) retirees was compared via canonical correlation analyses. The structure of post-retirement adaptation differed for the 2 groups. The relatively recent retirees'' adaptational variate emphasized satisfaction with retirement (0.990) and showed weaker loadings on self-esteem (0.475) and happiness (0.374). Corresponding factor loadings for the longer-term retirees were -0.340, 0.827 and 0.494, respectively. Thus, retirement satisfaction (or job deprivation) was a more salient aspect of the recent retirees'' adoptation while longer-term adaptation was a more general phenomenon. The inclusion of longer-term retirees in retirement research may obscure the important correlates of adaptation to this life change.