Older Adults Place Greater Importance Than Younger Adults on a Purposeful Retirement

Abstract

Objective: Regarding retirement, some but not all people decline in sense of purpose, and retirees may view maintaining a sense of purpose as nonessential. These findings suggest individual differences both in the importance placed on being purposeful during retirement in general and the discrepancy for purpose importance prior to and during retirement. Method: This study surveyed U.S. adults (n = 2009, M_age = 48.51) asking them about how they viewed having a purpose in two life stages: before and during retirement, as well as personality and demographic questions. Results: Findings suggest that, overall, people believe it is important to have a purpose and direction during retirement. This tendency was greater among older adults, and those higher on conscientiousness or lower on neuroticism. However, working status did not play a role in the perceived importance of purpose during the retirement period. Moreover, age differentiated who perceives during-retirement purpose as more important than prior-to-retirement purpose. Conclusion: The current findings add to our understanding of when individuals expect to be purposeful and counter the claims that older adults may place less importance on being purposeful. Instead, these findings point to the need for continuing work on how to help older adults maintain or find a purpose in life following retirement.

Keywords

retirement personality wellbeing retirement planning

The transition from work to retirement comes with several changes and challenges, due perhaps most obviously to a major change in life roles. Although this transition has merited significant attention with respect to health and wellbeing (Henning et al., 2016; van der Heide et al., 2013), accruing research has been dedicated to the implications of retirement for an individual's sense of purpose (e.g., Hill & Weston, 2019; Pinquart, 2002). Sense of purpose can be defined as the extent one perceives a direction in life that motivates engagement with personal goals and daily activities (Ryff, 1989; Scheier et al., 2006). Meta-analytic work has suggested a modest decline in sense of purpose for retirees (Pinquart, 2002), and that retirees exhibit greater declines in purposefulness over time relative to older adults who are still working (Hill & Weston, 2019). One apparent reason for these declines is that the loss of occupational roles may leave individuals without a direction and with fewer opportunities to engage with life. Support for the claim that the absence of work reduces access to sources of purpose comes from evidence that workers who are more satisfied with their jobs (Weston, Cardador, et al., 2021) and those who perceive greater opportunities to be challenged at work (Weston, Hill, et al., 2021) tend to report greater sense of purpose. When these satisfying and challenging roles are lost following retirement, individuals may be susceptible to feeling purposeless, unless they find new activities from which they can derive a purpose and direction (see Lewis & Hill, 2020).

These declines in purpose often are painted as particularly worrisome for healthy aging (e.g., Pfund & Lewis, 2020). Given that engagement with life is seen as a central component of successful aging (Rowe & Kahn, 1997), the loss of purposeful pursuits following retirement will portend problems for individuals’ health and wellbeing. Support comes from multiple studies suggesting that older adults with a stronger sense of purpose tend to experience reduced risk for major health problems (Kim et al., 2019; Kim et al., 2017), Alzheimer's disease and other dementias (Boyle et al., 2010), and even early mortality (Cohen et al., 2016). In this respect, the decline in sense of purpose may help explain some of the health risks associated with retirement; this directionality is particularly emphasized when considering research showing that the onset of multiple diseases and chronic conditions tends to hold the limited impact on changes in sense of purpose over long periods of time (Hill et al., 2021).

However, other research illustrates the need for a more nuanced perspective in understanding the role of retirement in purpose change. First, it is worth noting that studies have found that not all older adults decline in sense of purpose (e.g., Hill et al., 2015; Hill & Weston, 2019). Even when participants displayed modest mean-level declines, the sense of purpose for some older adults remained stable while others even reported an increase in sense of purpose following retirement. Second, retirement often is perceived as an opportunity for leisure and respite rather than goal-directed actions and responsibilities. Typically, people perceive purposefulness will peak sometime before or around retirement when considering its lifespan trajectory (Heckhausen et al., 1989), rather than continue increasing into later life. In fact, qualitative work suggests that some retirement community members do not expect to be purpose-driven (Lewis et al., 2020). As such, while some older adults maintain and even increase on purpose following retirement, others perceive that purpose no longer has a role in their postretirement life. Indeed, recent research has demonstrated that adults differ in how purposeful they expect their retirement to be, which may impact their retirement financial decisions (Hill & Pfund, 2021).

Predictors of Purposeful Perceptions

These findings suggest that there may be individual differences in (1) whether people place importance on being purposeful during retirement in general and (2) if that importance differs between prior to and during retirement. There is reason to expect both age and personality traits may play a role in predicting expectations for purpose following retirement. To start, age is likely to play a factor in multiple ways for the current work. First, age should positively predict the importance of having a purpose during retirement, given that older adults are closer to retirement than younger adults. Second, age is likely to be associated with the discrepancy between pre-and-post retirement purpose importance, because people may place greater emphasis on having a purpose as they get closer to retirement (or conversely, younger adults may focus more on prior-to-retirement purpose). In addition, the current work will examine whether age associations are separable from working status, by conducting these analyses separately for the full sample as well as only with those adults who are still working.

With respect to personality, past research has noted that the Big Five personality traits are associated with sense of purpose (Anglim et al., 2020; Sun et al., 2018), wherein individuals who are less neurotic and more conscientious, extraverted, agreeable, and open to new experiences tend to score higher on sense of purpose. Two potential explanations for these findings exist. First, personality traits may predispose individuals to be better equipped for purposeful life engagement, given their likelihood of planning, activity, and connecting with others. Second, personality traits may impact how individuals perceive their lives, leading to differences in purpose and contributing to whether the purpose is emphasized. As such, personality traits likely predict how much importance individuals place on being purposeful, regardless of the life stage.

Another consideration is what individuals want during their retirement. The literature on retirement planning also points to the potential value of considering personality traits. In particular, conscientiousness may be an important personality factor implicated in the retirement planning process (Hershey, 2004; Hershey et al., 2007). This work suggests that conscientious individuals, given their propensity toward greater organization and impulse control, are better at saving and planning for their retirement. Therefore, conscientious individuals may have different expectations for what they want and will be able to strive toward during their retirement years. Therefore, we expect that all traits may be associated with the perceived importance of having a purpose and direction, but conscientiousness may be particularly relevant with respect to the importance in retirement if people higher on the trait are planning ahead for their retirement years. In this respect, conscientiousness may be one trait uniquely suited to predict differences in prior-to versus during-retirement perceptions of the importance of purpose.

Current Study

The current study tested these predictions in a large-scale survey of U.S. adults, including adults who were and were not in full-time employment. This work sought to advance the literature on perceptions of purpose prior to and during retirement in three central ways. First, we examined whether people place less importance on having a purpose and direction following retirement, as would be expected based on the past qualitative work (Lewis et al., 2020). This research also incorporates critical tenets of past theoretical models of aging, which encourage individuals to remain engaged with life (Rowe & Kahn, 1997) and maintain a higher sense of purpose throughout the lifespan (Pfund & Lewis, 2020), by evaluating how important they view having a purpose at different times in the lifespan. Second, we tested whether perceived purpose importance changed as a function of age, and with respect to whether one was currently working. We also accounted for self-rated health in our analyses given its implications for sense of purpose levels and change (e.g., Hill & Weston, 2019). Although health condition onset appears to hold limited influence on changes in sense of purpose (Hill et al., in press), poorer self-rated health has been shown to predict decreases in sense of purpose (Hill & Weston, 2019), perhaps suggesting it is one's perception of health that matters more than a specific health diagnosis for sense of purpose.

Third, we explored whether personality traits would predict perceived purpose importance both prior to and following retirement. In line with past models (Hershey, 2004; Hershey et al., 2007), personality traits are integral to understanding what individuals expect for retirement and how they plan for it. Accordingly, it may be expected that personality traits should influence how much purpose and goal-direction individuals want during that time. Our investigation focused on conscientiousness, given the trait holds a strong association with sense of purpose (Sun et al., 2018) and predicts retirement planning (Asebedo et al., 2019). However, we did not limit ourselves to only this trait, given the novelty of the purposeful retirement construct. As such, we considered whether all Big Five personality traits influenced prior-to- and during-retirement perceptions.

Method

Participants and Procedure

The current study employed data collected in December 2020 by the Harris Poll, reflecting a nationwide sample of U.S. adults (total N = 2,009). Given the timing of the study, coinciding with the pandemic recovery efforts, it may have been a period when people were particularly focused on purposeful engagement, because they were dealing with disruptions to the environments that served to scaffold this engagement (Burrow & Hill, 2020). Participants completed measures in return for compensation from Harris, as part of their panel service, and they were allowed to choose not to respond to some demographic questions. The sample was between 18 and 93 years of age (M = 48.51 years, SD = 18.76); the cutoffs for age deciles were at 23, 30, 35, 40, 48, 54, 61, 68, and 74 years. Overall, 42 participants skipped items on race and 136 skipped items on income level. Among the remaining samples, 57.8% of participants reported identifying as female (42.2% male). For race and ethnicity, 75.6% identified as White (10.3% Black, 7.9% Hispanic, 3.7% Asian, 0.9% Native American). With respect to income, participants were given four answer choices: 47.8% reported an income of less than $50,000 a year, 17.2% reported between $50,000 and 75,000, 11.7% between $75,000 and 100,000, and 23.3% over $100,000). Most participants (66.8%) reported being in full-time employment, while 26.1% reported being retired. Given the small frequencies outside of these categories, and the fact that the pandemic complicated nonworking status distinctions (i.e., is someone fully retired, or will they return to the workplace following restrictions?), we focused on the distinction between full-time and not full-time employment. On average, participants reported being in “good” health overall (M = 3.21 on a 5-point scale, sd = 1.05).

Measures

Purpose Prior to and During Retirement. Participants were asked to rate “How important is each of the following to you?” on a scale from 1 (not important at all) to 5 (extremely important). This scale included the two primary items of interest: “Having a strong purpose and direction in my life prior to retirement” and “Having a strong purpose and direction in my life during retirement” with those phrases underlined in the original survey. Participants reported similar levels on average to the two items (Preretirement: M = 3.85, SD = 0.96; Postretirement: M = 3.86, SD = 0.97); as shown in Table 1, the correlation between scores was very strong but not at a level to suggest the scales were synonymous.

Table 1.

Correlations and Descriptive Data for Primary Variables of Interest.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
1. Purpose difference score	---
2. Prior retirement purpose	−.39*	---
3. During retirement purpose	.42*	.68*	---
4. Age	.14*	.01	.12*	---
5. Education	.00	.06*	.06*	.12*	---
6. Income	−.01	.11*	.10*	.01	.48*	---
7. Extraversion	−.03	.12*	.09*	.04	.01	.07*	---
8. Conscientiousness	.01	.21*	.22*	.31*	.11*	.06*	.15*	---
9. Neuroticism	−.05	−.10*	−.14*	−.25*	−.15*	−.17*	−.24*	−.35*	---
10. Self-rated health	.03	.16*	.18*	−.02	.26*	.30*	.10*	.18*	−.31*	---
M	0.01	3.85	3.86	48.51	2.33	2.10	2.45	2.92	3.05	3.21
SD	0.78	0.96	0.97	18.77	0.61	1.23	0.69	0.65	0.71	1.05

Note. * indicates p < .01.

Big Five Personality Traits. The Big Five personality traits were assessed using the 10-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI: Gosling et al., 2003). Initial validation of the TIPI (Gosling et al., 2003) demonstrates that it correlates strongly with existing, longer measures of the Big Five, including the NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and Big Five Inventory (John & Srivastava, 1999). Each of the five traits is assessed using two items apiece; modest-to-moderate inter-item correlations were found for three subscales: Extraversion, r = 0.15; conscientiousness, r = 0.22; and neuroticism, r = 0.30. However, for agreeableness (r = 0.03) the association between indicators was nonsignificant, and for Openness to Experience (r = −0.07) it was negative. Given this poor reliability, and the fact these two traits were not central to our hypotheses, the analyses below focus on the first three traits.

Analytic Plan

To start, t-tests were conducted to examine whether participants differed in how importantly they viewed having a purpose to be prior to versus during retirement. Furthermore, we evaluated whether these mean-level differences in these variables were consistent for full-time employees and those not working full-time. A difference score then was calculated to reflect the importance participants placed on purpose during retirement relative to the importance placed prior to retirement; thus, scores above 0 on this variable represented believing purpose was more important during retirement and below 0 represented believing purpose was more important before retirement, and 0 represented believing they were equally important. Next, bivariate correlations were conducted to explore the associations across study variables. Table 1 presents these correlations and the descriptive statistics for all variables; given the larger sample size, we focused on an alpha threshold of 0.01 for discussing significance in all analyses. Finally, we conducted a multiple regression analysis to predict the difference in purpose importance from demographics, self-rated health, and personality variables.

Results

Importance of Purpose and Direction

First, as noted above, the importance of having a purpose and direction was largely the same at the mean level both prior to and during retirement (t(2008) = −0.69, p = .490), running counter to expectations. Breaking down this comparison further, these mean ratings still were similar for those currently working full time (M_prior = 3.81 vs. M_during = 3.83, t(1342) = −1.24, p = .22) and for those not currently working (M_prior = 3.93 vs. M_during = 3.92, t(665) = 0.47, p = .64). Therefore, regardless of time period or working status, having a strong purpose and direction was rated as relatively important across participants. That said, the difference score (during-retirement importance minus prior-to-retirement importance) did show variability ranging from −4 to + 4. Overall, 15.9% of the sample suggested that it was more important to have a strong purpose and direction prior to retirement and 17.7% suggested it was more important during retirement.

Correlates of Importance Scores

Table 1 presents the correlations between purpose importance and the primary variables of interest. Looking across the two variables of importance, results suggested that individuals who are more educated, higher income, extraverted, conscientious, healthier, and less neurotic reported greater importance of having a purpose and direction regardless of retirement status. The one apparent difference was with respect to age effects, where age was positively associated with greater importance of purpose during retirement (r = .12, p < .001) but not associated with the importance of purpose preretirement (r = .01, p = .71).

Next, we examined the correlates of the difference scores, in order to understand who placed greater importance on purpose prior to or during retirement. No significant gender differences were evidenced for the difference in perceived purpose importance, t(2007) = −0.63, p = .527, as both women (diff = .003) and men (diff = .025) reported slightly higher importance on average during retirement. Moreover, neither education level (r = .00, p = .96) nor income (r = −.01, p = .74) were associated with differences in importance. However, age was positively associated with differences, insofar that older adults were more likely to deem it relatively more important to have a purpose during retirement (r = .14, p < .001). With respect to personality traits, none were significantly associated with difference scores using the stringent alpha threshold. Finally, self-rated health was unrelated to relative difference scores (r = .03, p = .24).

Multiple Regression Analyses

Next, a multiple regression analysis utilized each of these variables to predict difference scores in purpose importance (during- minus prior-to-retirement). The multiple regression focused on the purpose difference scores as the outcome, to consider who wanted a more purposeful retirement during-retirement relative to prior. Table 2 presents the findings of this regression model. When combined together, the only significant predictor of difference scores was age, t(1863) = 6.25, p < .001. Again, this finding suggests that individuals may place greater relative importance on having a higher sense of purpose and direction during retirement as they get older. However, personality traits, health, and other demographic variables may play less of a role in who differs on perceptions of purpose importance prior to and during retirement. Looking at the correlations calculated for Table 1, it is apparent that this finding is driven by the importance placed during retirement.¹

Table 2.

Multiple Regression Analysis Predicting Difference Between Prior and During Retirement Purpose Importance.

	B (s.e.)	Std. Beta	t	p-value
Full time employment	0.06 (0.05)	0.04	1.34	.18
Age	0.01 (0.001)	0.16	6.25	< .001
Gender	0.04 (0.04)	0.02	0.94	.35
Education	−0.05 (0.04)	−0.04	−1.55	.12
Income	−0.01 (0.02)	−0.02	−0.73	.47
Extraversion	−0.04 (0.03)	−0.04	−1.62	.11
Conscientiousness	−0.04 (0.03)	−0.04	−1.40	.16
Neuroticism	−0.02 (0.03)	−0.02	−0.55	.58
Self-rated health	−0.03 (0.02)	0.04	1.69	.09

Discussion

Past research has suggested that the retirement years could be a period of increased vulnerability to declines in purposefulness; however, one difficulty in interpreting these findings has been that research had yet to consider whether people deemed it important to maintain a sense of purpose during retirement. The current findings strongly suggest that people do, in fact, believe it is important to have a purpose and direction during retirement. Participants in the current sample reported high levels of perceived importance for having a purpose and direction during retirement, well above the midpoint of the scale. When considering the correlations with purpose during retirement scores, this tendency was greater among adults who were older, higher in conscientiousness, and lower in neuroticism, but working status did not appear to play a role in perceived importance.

Next, we compared perceptions of purpose importance prior-to- and during-retirement, by predicting the difference in scores on these two measures. When including all predictors at once, age was the only unique factor differentiating who perceives during-retirement purpose as more important than prior-to-retirement purpose. Put differently, little evidence was found for personality traits playing a unique role in understanding whether individuals differ in their perceptions of when having a purpose mattered more. As such, this work advances the burgeoning literature on whether individuals expect to be purposeful during retirement (e.g., Hill & Pfund, 2021; Lewis et al., 2020), and the importance they place on a goal-directed retirement. Given these multiple regression results, the implications of this work focus on developmental stage and chronological age rather than personality traits as critical factors influencing purposeful perceptions.

Though cross-sectional in nature, the current findings have implications for both the understanding and promotion of purposeful activity during retirement. Past work has suggested the need for purpose-focused interventions for older adults (e.g., Hill et al., 2020) and has provided some initial efforts toward this end (Friedman et al., 2017). The current study scaffolds this focus insofar that most adults in our study viewed having a strong purpose and direction during retirement as important. This point adds nuance to the suggestion that people focus on leisure and social goals later in life (Freund, 2020). One possibility is that individuals are still viewing these leisure and social goals as purposeful, and potentially as a new direction for their lives which may substitute for the occupational goals they may have previously held. Future research should consider a mixed-methods strategy in order to understand whether purpose importance ratings differ depending on how people interpret the item. However, variability was evident in these ratings, suggesting not all adults deem purpose during retirement as important; as such, researchers may wish to use importance ratings as a tool for personalizing interventions for those older adults who most want a purposeful retirement.

Several limitations merit note to direct future research. First, the cross-sectional nature of the study prohibits investigating whether importance ratings do change with development or life task achievements. Moreover, the current study cannot disambiguate age from cohort differences. Second, the utilization of data from a polling agency provides a large-scale and wide-spanning sample of U.S. adults, but it did limit the number of items that could be administered, forcing a focus on single-item measures. This issue also limited the ability to further explore how participants were interpreting the purpose items. Third, as these findings are couched within the U.S. context, and the meaning and timing of retirement differs across countries, future research is needed to understand whether findings generalize to other cultural contexts. Even within the U.S. context, retirement conceptions will differ based on saved income, caregiving, and health demands. Thus, future research should consider the role of these personal-context specific variables in better understanding how individuals perceive the presence and importance of purpose in their own retirement. Furthermore, work also is needed to move beyond the pandemic context; the timing of the study may have accentuated the salience of purposeful engagement for participants (Burrow & Hill, 2020), which can be viewed both as a potential strength and weakness. Fourth, we were unfortunately limited with respect to the ability to move beyond a dichotomous employment variable. In addition, the interpretation of retirement and nonworking status certainly changed in the pandemic context. As such, we encourage further investigation of whether employment status impacts purposeful perceptions outside of the COVID-19 context, particularly given that full versus partial retirement may play a role in how purposeful individuals feel.

These caveats aside, the current findings provide strong evidence that adults do deem having a purpose during retirement as important. Moreover, some individuals even view it as more important than having one prior to retirement, which may be particularly true for older adults who are nearing retirement. As such, with findings indicating that people desire of having a purpose and direction during retirement, this research calls for greater attention into how we can help older adults maintain or find purpose after they retire from the workplace. One essential direction is to consider how these perceptions differ based on the roles they take on during retirement, such as volunteerism or caregiving. Caregiving may hold multifaceted implications for the purpose (Hill et al., 2020), and this group is particularly valuable to consider regarding the perceived importance of maintaining a purpose and direction for life. Given that the current work shows that variability exists across individuals in how important they view having a purpose as being during retirement, future research is needed to uncover predictors of these individual differences. That being said, it appears that despite the potential vulnerability for declines in sense of purpose in retirement (Hill & Weston, 2019; Pinquart, 2002), most individuals still desire a purpose during this developmental stage, calling for additional work on how to help people staying purposeful across the lifespan.

Footnotes

IRB Statement

The IRB for the primary author's institution did not deem the study as human subjects research, given it was a secondary data analysis. The current work does not involve any identifiable data or HIPAA considerations.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: VJS is the Founder and CEO of Kumanu, Inc., a well-being technology company.

Funding

Gabrielle N. Pfund was funded by the National Institute on Aging Grant, Grant/Award Number: 5T32AG00030-45.

ORCID iD

Patrick L. Hill

Notes

Author Biographies

Patrick L. Hill is an associate professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. His research examines how sense of purpose promotes positive aging and developmental outcomes across the lifespan. He is particularly interested in whether, why, and when retirement impacts changes in sense of purpose.

Rachel D. Best is getting her PhD in clinical health psychology at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University. Her research interests include values-based interventions, disability, and quality of life, especially in stigmatized populations.

Gabrielle N. Pfund received her PhD in Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and is currently a Postdoctoral Research in the Department of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on the lifespan development of sense of purpose and its implications for health and well-being.

M. Teresa Cardador is an associate professor of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research explores how occupations, gender, work environments, and identity affect how workers experience, make sense of, and find meaningfulness in their work. She is particularly interested in the experiences of workers in gender-segregated occupations, such as engineering, surgery, policing, and nursing.

Victor J. Strecher is a professor in the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Founder of Kumanu, a digital well-being company. His research interests focus on the role of purpose in life among employees, older adults, patients, and college students.

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