Aging & Social Change: Eleventh Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

The relationship between transition to retirement and individual state of health has been the subject of investigation in several disciplines, and, more recently, in Public Health. The effects of retirement on health and health behaviors will be different depending on the moment and the way the individual retires. The target population of this study was composed of individuals enrolled in 18 randomly selected health units in Portugal, who fulfilled the condition of being retired for less than 5 years. Focus group was used as a data collection methodology with simultaneous collection of quantitative information of sociodemographic characterization. The average age of the 146 participants was 63.7 years. 43.5% were male. Participants had been retired, on average, for 2.76 years. With regard to active life, 8.25% of the participants worked in the primary sector, while 22.68% worked in the secondary sector and the vast majority, 67.01%, worked in the tertiary sector. In relation to the themes that emerged from the focus groups, these were related to the moment Before Retirement, the moment After Retirement and the Perspective of the Future. The transition to retirement is an event associated, in most Western countries, with the onset of aging. The demographic evolution makes middle aged individuals an increasingly significant group of the population. Health promotion programs must pay attention to this period of life, which is also part of the life cycle and which has been frequently disregarded by health policies.