ABSTRACT
Understanding retirement is central to the process of aging because it represents an important life transition for the majority of older adults throughout the world. There are many economic, social, and psychological reasons why individuals engage in paid work, as well as many concordant factors related to leaving the workforce. The transition from paid work to retirement is characterized as a complex, dynamic longitudinal process (Shultz & Wang, 2011). The objective of this chapter is to describe this increasingly complex process and offer recommendations pertaining to methodological issues in order to advise researchers studying the retirement process.
