The Rise and Fall of Retirement in the United States: A Social History

A social history of retirement in the United States, this book tells the fascinating story of retirement from the mid‑20th century right up to today through a social and cultural lens—revealing key insights into the status of older people in American society at different points in the country’s history. The Rise and Fall of Retirement in the United States details how retirement has been heavily promoted to Americans as a much‑deserved reward for decades of hard work since it became an institution in the United States in the late 19th century as a means to replace older workers with younger and cheaper ones. Retirement was popularly portrayed as a kind of paradise—an idyllic experience in which one was liberated from having to support oneself and one’s family through work. Made possible by pensions and Social Security, one’s “golden years” could and should be a happy stage of life filled with rest, relaxation, and leisure, Americans were told, but cracks in this narrative began to appear in the 1950s when a steady stream of research and anecdotal evidence showed there to be powerful social and psychological benefits of work. Over the following decades, not just social but economic and political forces worked against retirement, significantly reducing its cultural currency. Lawrence R. Samuel reveals the wide gap between how retirement was sold to Americans and how it was experienced, and this book is an important resource for students and instructors in sociology, political sociology, social policy, aging studies, American cultural and political studies, and modern history, as well as for policymakers and analysts.

About the Author

Lawrence R. Samuel is a Miami‑based author and independent scholar. He holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota and is the author of many books, including Diversity in the United States: A Cultural History of the Past Century (Routledge, 2023), Age Friendly: Ending Ageism in America (Routledge, 2022), and The American Middle Class: A Cultural History (Routledge, 2014).