Retirement
Retirement is the right of a worker to definitively stop working when he reaches a determined age, when his physical conditions don't allow him to work anymore (by illness or accident), or even for personal choice (usually in presence of an adequate pension).
Even if generally speaking its origin is ancient for most privileged professions, talking about ordinary workers the retirement age is a conquer of 19th and 20th century, together with the maximum limit of hours each worker has to work per day, and usually it is object of detailed regulations in many of the most developed countries, while in worse economies of poorest countries this concept might be missing at all and a worker should be forced to work until death. In some cultures it is severely considered that the state has to provide a safe economical status for the worker when retired; therefore this is sometimes in national constitutional acts too.
The retirement age varies from country to country and respective workers (where allowed) choose or however have to retire at different ages, but it is generally somewhere between 55 and 70. In some countries this age is different for male and females (usually by a 5 years difference), and sometimes certain jobs, most dangerous or fatiguing ones in particular, have a special (usually earlier) retirement age.
Retired workers then support themselves either through superannuation, or pensions in most cases provided by the government, but sometimes granted only by private subscriptions to mutual funds (in this case, subscriptions might be compulsory or, seldom, only left to a volounteer choice). Also, in some countries a sort of additional "bonus" is granted una tantum in proportion of the years of work and the average wages; this is usually provided by the employer.
The financial weight of the total amount of pensions on a government's budget, in the states in which it is the state to pay for them, is usually very heavy and is the reason for political debates about the retirement age; the state might then be either more interested in a later retirement age (for a merely economical reason), or on the contrary on an earlier retirement age, in case the most urgent need is to ensure to a wider number of unemployed workers to access careers (social reason). In the countries whose governments set their preferences on economical results, the social cost of health (which increases with the diseases that statistically come with age) is a deeply related argument and usually causes the health system too to be regulated in consequence.
Generally speaking, in most countries a fair retirement right is always granted to those workers who loose, at whatever age, the capability of working, should it depend on accidents or on important deminutions of health and/or disabling diseases; still there are, however, many countries in which the social organisation does not allow workers to receive an economical assistance and disabled or sick people are consequently forced to work even when in such sad conditions.
In some economies, retirement might coincide with important variations of the life of the family; depending of the quality of the relationships among the members of the family, and (before that) according with the local culture, organisation and habits, a retired worker might find interesting to move to a new location, maybe specialised (retirement village), therefore having less frequent contacts with their previous contest. In several countries, instead, retired workers will continue to participate the life of their family and their society, mostly depending on often very ancient ethnical roles. Several countries are sponsoring studies and quite innovative initiatives to help retired workers to keep on contributing to social and cultural life (not for economical advantages), and an interesting success are recording some recent special universities for elder people.
Many people in the later years of life, due to failing health, require varying degrees of assistance in living, the highest degree of assistance - in some countries - being provided in a nursing home.
Retirement ceases upon death, or occasionally the retiree deciding to go back to work in either the same or a different area. Typically, retirees who go back to work are relatively well-off retirees in good health who find the lack of activity boring and work mainly for their own amusement, often turning a hobby into a job. For instance, some retirees go into business selling arts and crafts.