The contention that retirement may have an adverse effect on health has become increasingly popular with the recent categorization of this phenomenon as a stressful "life event." The small number of empirical studies examining the health outcomes of retirement, however, appear neither to support nor to refute this hypothesis. Moreover, the serious methodological problems inherent in most of these studies caution against the generalization of findings. This paper examines the existing research on the health and retirement relationship within the theoretical context of Atchley's process approach to retirement. Recent refinements in the study of life events (e.g., a focus on the timing of the event and the degree of control experienced) are seen as offering important potential contributions both to our understanding of retirement and to the development of more incisive and conceptually sound research in this area. At the same time, the inadequacy of existing life-events scales when applied to an older age group, and the general failure to view life changes within a broad sociostructural context are emphasized as weaknesses of the life-events approach that should be taken into account in future research on the complex retirement and health relationship.