Abstract
Older workers were followed through their first two years of retirement in order to explore the lingering effects of preretirement identities on their retirement adjustment and self-esteem. Several interesting findings emerged. Preretirement identities and social background characteristics influenced initial retirement adjustment and later changes in retirement adjustment. In addition, lingering preretirement worker identity and emerging retirement adjustment influenced self-esteem two years into retirement. Further, while there were no overall gender differences, some individual identities and social background characteristics influenced retirement adjustment and self-esteem in a different manner for men and women.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was partially supported by a grant from the National Institutes on Aging/National Institutes of Health (R01-AG07410).