{"id":3031,"date":"2013-05-30T04:00:32","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T08:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kerryhannon.com\/?p=3031"},"modified":"2013-05-28T21:51:47","modified_gmt":"2013-05-29T01:51:47","slug":"women-retire-earlier-than-men-but-dont-have-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kerryhannon.com\/?p=3031","title":{"rendered":"Women Retire Earlier Than Men, But Don’t Have To"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"forbes\"<\/a>I\u2019m surrounded daily by boomer women who are working full-time or part-time, volunteering, starting businesses and taking courses online as well as at community colleges.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re engaged, working hard \u2014 and happy.<\/p>\n

None of them are \u201cretired\u201d or planning to step aside anytime soon. (If you\u2019re a woman over 50 who wants to remain in the workforce for a while, I have some suggestions below.)<\/p>\n

A Head-Scratching Retirement Study<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I was perplexed after stumbling upon a\u00a0blog post<\/a>\u00a0that asked, \u201cWhy do women retire earlier than men?\u201d on the website of the Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College. It was written by Phyllis Moen, McKnight presidential chair in sociology at the University of Minnesota and research fellow at the Sloan Center, and based on a study by Moen and Sarah M. Flood, a researcher at the University of Minnesota.<\/p>\n

(MORE:<\/strong>\u00a0A Gen Xer\u2019s Plea: \u2018Mom, You Need to Prepare for Retirement\u2019<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Moen reports that that women in their 50s, 60s and early 70s \u2013 sometimes called the encore years \u2013 \u201care less apt than men to be working for pay across this age span and more likely to use the word \u2018retired\u2019 to define themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also notes that self-employment is less common among women than men in that age range. \u201cWhen we broadened our scope to include any form of public engagement (paid work; volunteering; informally helping out), we found that men are still more apt to be engaged than women,\u201d she writes, \u201cand the percentages don\u2019t match up until men and women are in their late 70s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moen and Flood based their findings on data they reviewed concerning the amount of time Americans in their encore years allocate to paid work. They just published their conclusions in the journal\u00a0Social Problems<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reasons to Keep Working<\/strong><\/p>\n

I view their conclusions as disconcerting since I\u2019m always preaching the importance of working as long as you can and gradually phasing into retirement through part-time, bridge jobs that let you stave off dipping into savings and delay claiming Social Security. (Your Social Security checks get 8 percent larger every year you postpone receiving them between age 62 to 70.)<\/p>\n

As I wrote in my book,\u00a0Great Jobs for Everyone 50+<\/em><\/a>, work and volunteering give us a sense of purpose and help us feel connected and needed. It\u2019s hard to pin a precise paycheck to those feelings, but they\u2019re very real.<\/p>\n

Moreover, many experts on aging say you\u2019re likely to stay healthy as you get older by learning new things, remaining active socially and exercising. Stop challenging your brain with new experiences and you\u2019ll be in trouble.<\/p>\n

Yet Moen and Flood, drawing on the government\u2019s\u00a0American Time Use Survey<\/a>, say boomer women are exiting the workforce faster than men and aren\u2019t carving out much time for volunteering when they do.<\/p>\n

What Makes Women Retire Earlier Than Men<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why? They cite three reasons:<\/p>\n