When Bob Willis thought about retiring, he knew just how he wanted to do it. Slowly. Or maybe never.
Since 1995 Willis, 66, a University of Michigan economist, has directed the enormous Health and Retirement Study conducted by the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and funded by the National Institute on Aging. One of the largest and most ambitious social science research projects in the world, the study surveys a nationally representative sample of more than 20,000 Americans over the age of 50 every other year to track how they are doing as they age.
"I was really interested in divesting myself of the administrative duties connected with the study so I could spend more time on a new line of research I've been pursuing," Willis said. "But I also wanted to stay actively involved with the Health and Retirement Study. This study, and the people who work on it, are an important part of my life."
Willis had always consulted closely with the study's founding director, U-M economist F. Thomas Juster, 80, who embodies the process of retiring so gradually you don't really retire at all in any conventional sense. For years after Juster formally retired, he showed up in his ISR office on a daily basis. "Isn't he retired?" puzzled staffers asked each other.
In fact, findings from the Health & Retirement Study itself clearly show that gradual retirement---rather than working full tilt one day and not at all the next---is the way most Americans would do it if they had the choice. Three out of every four older workers would prefer to reduce their hours gradually rather than retire abruptly, according to the study. But employers' lack of flexibility about working hours usually prevents this. Among working study participants between the ages of 57 and 67, only 13 percent described themselves as "partially retired."
One analysis of the study data, supported by the ISR Michigan Retirement Research Center, found that two-thirds of workers would partially retire if firms allowed them to scale back their hours at the same hourly wage they earned while working full-time. And if this happened, the percent of the population between the ages of 62 and 69 who are completely retired would drop by 10 to 15 percent---taking some of the strain off Social Security and raising the rates of experienced workers in the labor force at a time when the country needs it the most---just when the baby boomers are reaching the traditional age of retirement.
So Willis is in the lucky minority, his own study clearly shows. He is also lucky that his colleague and study co-director, economist David Weir, was already in place and ready to take the reins.
"As we talked about this transition, we were very aware of the necessary and healthy tension between continuity and change," said Weir, 52. "A key reason for doing it this way was to preserve the wisdom of people who have been involved in the study for a long time while at the same time nurturing the next generation of researchers."