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Myth of the Industrial Scrap Heap: A Revisionist View of Turn-of-the-Century American Retirement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Susan B. Carter  and
Richard Sutch
Susan B. Carter
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics at the University of California, Riverside.
Richard Sutch
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics and History and Director of the Institute of Business and Economic Research at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Abstract

Using the census survival method to calculate net flows across employment states between 1900 and 1910, we find that approximately one-fifth of all men who reached the age of 55 eventually retired before death. Many of these retirees appear to have planned their withdrawal from paid employment by accumulating assets, becoming self-employed, and then liquidating their assets to provide a stream of income to finance consumption in old age. This “modern” retirement behavior has important implications for the economic history of capital and labor markets, of saving and investment, of insurance and pensions, and of the family economy.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 5 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1996

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