Slightly unrelated: is this a common phenomenon? ie people staying on and working well past when they should have stopped and also when they could have? reason I ask is...my predecessor was an 85 year old guy, really nice, but was never going to retire (even though he had 40 years with the state and a full pension). ultimately (and sadly, albeit not for me since I got his job), he had to because of serious medical conditions, but I know there was concern that had he stayed he would have stayed forever, and because of our union, he would likely never be able to be "let go." Should I prepare myself for this when I too am 80? (I have other areas of my life besides work, so maybe that won't be me...but I'm nervous it will be).
You should prepare for retirement like a reasonable person. Keep a budget. Don't create a lifestyle that prevents you from saving for retirement. Plan for disasters. Take care of your health. Buy disability insurance. Plan to exit the field eventually.
I have been interested in the ages of practicing psychologists since grad school. The empirical data seems to suggest that there are many psychologists who remain in practice well after 65.
Informally, the provided explanations seem to be categorized into such broad explanations as:
1) It is a sedentary job that allows working past the usual age of retirement.
2) Due to training requirements, psychologists enter into the professional workforce at a later age. Therefore, they need to work longer.
3) They love the field, so why stop?
My criticisms of these rationales
1) Most cognitive tests including IQ and memory tests show normal age related decline, even in healthy people. Consequently, there is likely a point in which the demands of professional activities exceed the cognitive abilities of an aging psychologist. Therefore, the physical demands explanation is unreasonable.
2) Working at an advanced age is not always seen in professions with similar or greater lengths of training. Therefore, this explanation may reflect insufficient retirement savings, mediated by such factors as poor pay, or poor financial planning.
3) The professional activity occurring almost exclusively in a money making setting seems to contradict a pure enjoyment explanation. One would expect to see a greater participation in charitable or research consulting activities, if enjoyment were the sole factor.
What I believe:
The field had an incredible decline in income from about 1987- present. This was largely due to CMS not increasing the valuation of psychologists work in step with inflation. There were likely insufficient lobbying efforts, which may have been predicated by 1960s "fight the power, Carl Rogers says we are not in healthcare, oh wait, CMS says they're not going to pay us for non-healthcare! Never-mind, we're healthcare.' BS). Like many people, older psychologists did not properly save for retirement in a realistic manner. So staying in the profession past 65 became increasingly commonplace. IN more structured employment settings as tenured professorships, older psychologists are preventing younger psychologists from enjoying the same professional trajectory they enjoyed, by holding a spot. They get to say they've been in practice for 35 years. They can say that the ECPs aren't as advanced in their knowledge as they were, so increase training requirements. Never mind that they weren't subjected to those requirements, and their knowledge base was at a lower level when they went into practice. They can hire some post docs, and make money off them. They can hire some ECPs and pay them financially exploitative rates because the APA does not enforce that section of the ethics code. And they can rationalize it by saying really, it's the incredible number of ECPs entering that is the cause of their low income. It's not their employment practices, or the training policies they voted for.
