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Title: The Retirement of the Rebels: Georgia Confederate Pensions and Retirement Behavior in the New South

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2001

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Abstract: This dissertation investigates the rise of retirement and the apparent shift in retirement planning strategies in the early twentieth century. I focus on the behavior of Southerners, a population that has not been studied in detail although retirement rates were much lower in the South than the North in this period. To investigate the source of the North-South retirement gap, samples of men living in two Georgia counties in 1910 are linked from the Census to state tax digests and the records of the Georgia Confederate Pension program. A comparison of Union and Confederate veterans reveals that regional characteristics, like race and farm residence, influenced retirement behavior more than military pensions did. Occupational differences also cannot explain the regional retirement gap, since farmers were more likely to retire than nonfarmers. Wealth has a significant effect on the labor force participation of white men, but no effect on black men. This suggests that a large segment of the southern population did not rely on accumulated wealth in retirement, and instead remained in the labor force or relied on family for support. Explaining the apparent change in retirement planning strategies over the twentieth century from relying on children to life-cycle saving requires a reexamination of the theory of the choice among retirement planning strategies. A theory of saving across the life cycle is presented which includes altruistic motives between parents and children. This model provides a more general approach to the theory of retirement planning than previous models, which are based on a non-altruistic bequest motive. Wealth accumulation data are used to estimate the overall prevalence of two possible savings strategies: relying on children or on accumulated savings in retirement. In 1910, there is evidence that income from children was an important component of retirement savings. A possible change in strategies across time is investigated by examining the behavior of synthetic cohorts constructed from the tax digests of 1900, 1910, and 1920. There is little evidence of a transition to the more modern life-cycle saving strategy until 1920.

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Authors: Short, Joanna

Institution: Indiana University

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Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Publisher Location: Bloomington, IN

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Aging and Retirement, Crime and Deviance

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