ABSTRACT
Men and women who begin life similarly situated may end it in quite diverse circumstances. There is great human drama as individuals learn their destinies, particularly when life brings a major reversal. Stable trajectories in work, health, or family life can alter course in a moment. On a smaller scale, time and chance do indeed happen to us all—raising the question of continuity in individuals' lives as they age. This chapter examines the implications of a cohort's shift from work institutions to retirement institutions. Individual pathways become problematic across the work and retirement phases of the life course because retirement means exit from employment and entry into retirement institutions. Over 20 years of research on the linkage between the work and retirement life course phases allows some robust conclusions on inequality. Intracohort differentiation comes from two sources: different lifetime careers and middle- or late-life events and the interaction between them.
