Related: The notion of "retirement" is a relatively recent invention. Traditionally, when you were too old to work the farm or prove the theorem (sorry, cognitive decline is a well-documented thing, and tends to coincide with physical decline[1]), you would "retire" to a productive life in less-demanding pursuits: caretaking of the grandkids, woodworking, food preservation, writing, etc. It's important to maintain ho…
Not really. The idea of old people who could no longer work effectively but still had many years of their life ahead of them is not a recent invention.
The notion of an old age pension -- whether paid by a company or a government -- that "everyone" got is relatively new. But that doesn't mean "retirement" is new. It was just paid for by individual families before. Go read literature and it is chock full of grandparents from the pre-modern era just hanging out at the multi-generational home not exactly doing a whole lot.
People who say retirement is a new phenomenon point to phrases like "In 1880 the majority of men older than sixty-four toiled in the labor force".
But this statement hides a truth: 25% of men over 65 didn't toil in the workforce, so clearly retirement had already been "invented". And, of course, there is the entire other half of humanity -- women -- who also weren't in the workforce. So the reality is that over 62% of people over the age of 65 didn't participate in the workforce in 1850.