Criteria for Retirement
"Aging, true physiological aging, is not determined by the time elapsed since birth, but by the total amount of wear and tear to which the body has been exposed. There is, indeed, a great differen between physiologic and chronological age." These words of Han, Selye, who has worked on the problems of aging and the stress of IIf for over three decades, give us a key to the problem of how long any given individual should continue to work. Measuring physiological psychological age is most difficult. Forces other than "the good of th
individual" have set standards. After all, chronological age is easy to determine, and it does give us a universal standard.
The magic age of sixty-five for retirement came about originally as a base for social security legislation. It was lowered to sixty·two for women' shortly after the Social Security Act was passed. One may question the logic of this type of differentiation. It could hardly have been made because women outlive men by some four years. Under various conditions and with some options one, of course, may, and in some instances must, retire before sixty·five or sixty-two. The trend, however, toward lower retirement ages continues to increase. Most Americans never retire. They are either forced out of work or they die before retirement. Of those who retire, some 25 percent try to find new work. There is not a great deal of retirement moonlighting, particularly among those receiving society security.
