Subjective Well-Being Across the Retirement Transition—Historical Differences and the Role of Perceived Control

Given substantial cohort differences in psychosocial functioning, for example in perceived control, and ongoing pension reforms, the context of retirement has changed over the last decades. However, there islimited research on the consequences of such developments on historical differences in subjective wellbeing(SWB) in the retirement transition. In the present study, we investigated historical differences inchange in life satisfaction and positive affect across the retirement transition. We further included perceivedcontrol as a predictor of change in well-being. Analyses were based on subsamples of retirees among threenationally representative samples of the German Ageing Survey (1996; 2002; 2008) and their respectivefollow-ups 6 years later. Results showed historical improvements in preretirement positive affect (i.e., latersamples had higher preretirement levels). Contrastingly, earlier samples showed a larger increase in positiveaffect across the retirement transition compared to later samples. No historical differences were found in lifesatisfaction. Perceived control showed no historical improvement and did not seem to contribute tohistorical differences in subjective well-being. Nevertheless, we found that the association of perceivedcontrol and positive affect increased over historical time. The results showed that the historical contextseems to play a role in the experience of retirement, and that it is helpful to distinguish between cognitive–evaluative and affective components of well-being