CHICAGO — Nearly one-quarter
of Americans say they never plan to retire, according to a poll that suggests a
disconnection between individuals’ retirement plans and the realities of aging
in the workforce.
Experts say illness, injury,
layoffs and caregiving responsibilities often force older workers to leave
their jobs sooner than they'd like.
According to the poll from The
Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 23% of workers,
including nearly 2 in 10 of those over 50, don't expect to stop working.
Roughly another quarter of Americans say they will continue working beyond
their 65th birthday.
According to government data,
about 1 in 5 people 65 and older was working or actively looking for a job in
June.
For many, money has a lot to
do with the decision to keep working.
"The average retirement
age that we see in the data has gone up a little bit, but it hasn't gone up
that much," says Anqi Chen, assistant director of savings research at the
Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
"So people have to live
in retirement much longer, and they may not have enough assets to support
themselves in retirement."
When asked how financially
comfortable they feel about retirement, 14% of Americans under the age of 50
and 29% over 50 say they feel extremely or very prepared, according to the
poll. About another 4 in 10 older adults say they do feel somewhat prepared,
while just about one-third feel unprepared. By comparison, 56% of younger
adults say they don't feel prepared for retirement.
Among those who are fully
retired, 38% said they felt very or extremely prepared when they retired, while
25% said they felt not very or not at all prepared.
"One of the things about
thinking about never retiring is that you didn't save a whole lot of
money," says Ronni Bennett, 78, who was pushed out of her job as a New
York City-based website editor at 63.
She searched for work in the
immediate aftermath of her layoff, a process she describes as akin to
"banging my head against a wall." Finding Manhattan too expensive
without a steady stream of income, she eventually moved to Portland, Maine. A
few years later, she moved again, to Lake Oswego, Oregon.
"Sometimes I fantasize
that if I win the lottery, I'd go back to New York," says Bennett, who has
a blog called Time Goes By that chronicles her experiences aging, relocating
and, during the past two years, living with a pancreatic cancer diagnosis.
Meanwhile, Americans have
mixed assessments of how the aging workforce affects workers: 39% think people
staying in the workforce longer is mostly a good thing for American workers,
while 29% think it's more a bad thing and 30% say it makes no difference.
A somewhat higher share, 45%,
thinks it has a positive effect on the U.S. economy.
Working Americans who are 50
and older think the trend is more positive than negative for their own careers
— 42% to 15%. Those younger than 50 are about as likely to say it's good for
their careers as to say it's bad.
Just 6% of fully retired
AP-NORC poll respondents said they left the labor market before turning 50.
But remaining in the workforce
may be unrealistic for people dealing with unexpected illness or injuries. For
them, high medical bills and a lack of savings loom large over day-to-day
expenditures.
"People like me, who are
average, everyday working people, can have something catastrophic happen, and
we lose everything because of medical bills," says Larry Zarzecki, a
former Maryland police officer who stopped working in his 40s after developing
a resting tremor in his right hand and a series of cognitive and physical
symptoms he at times found difficult to articulate.
At 47, he was diagnosed with
Parkinson's disease. Now 57 and living in Baltimore, Zarzecki says he has
learned "to take from Peter and give to Paul, per se, to help make ends
meet."
Zarzecki has since helped
found Movement Disorder Education and Exercise, a nonprofit organization that
offers support and treatment programs to those with similar diseases and
certain traumatic brain injuries. He has also helped lobby state and national
lawmakers to address rising prescription drug prices.
He receives a pension and
health insurance through the state, but he spends more than $3,000 each year out
of pocket on medications.
“I can’t afford, nor will my
insurance cover, the most modern medication there is for Parkinson’s,” he says.
“Eat, heat or treat. These are decisions that people in my position have to
make. When it’s cold out, or if it’s real hot out, do you eat, heat (your home)
or treat (your ailment)?”
-- The Associated Press
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