Abstract

For Hispanics, the decision to stay in the workforce longer may have less to do with projected finances and more with cultural values, such as religion and family.13 Failure to put Hispanics’ retirement planning and behaviors in the context of normative cultural values limits our ability to understand the dynamics and to create culturally-sensitive supports and programs to improve their outcomes. However, a discussion of cultural values should be prefaced with an understanding that significant variation occurs between Hispanic cultural subgroups—just as individuals subscribe to group norms to varying degrees. In this chapter, I will first discuss Hispanic migration histories and life course conditions. Second, I will describe Hispanics’ retirement planning, followed by a description of the discrepancy between retirement expectation and reality. Finally, I will sightsee the potential effect of the discrepancy between planned and actual retirement timing on Hispanics, from the productive aging framework.