We analyse a large longitudinal data file to determine who has retired and to assess how successful they are in maintaining their incomes after retirement. Our main conclusions are as follows. First, in the two years immediately after retirement the aftertax income replacement ratios average...

If retirement means a substantial and sustained reduction in the time spent working for pay or profit, measurement requires a definition of substantial and sufficient observations of the same individuals to determine whether a transition from “working” to “retired” status has occurred....

Measures of retirement that take a cohort perspective are appealing since retirement patterns may change, and it would be useful to have consistent measures that would make it possible to compare retirement patterns over time and between countries or regions. We propose and implement two...