Retirement idea of retirement is of recent origin, being introduced during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Previously, low life expectancy and the absence of pension arrangements meant that most workers continued to work until death. Germany was the first country to introduce retirement benefits in 1889. Nowadays, most developed countries have systems to provide pensions on retirement in old age, which may be sponsored by employers or the state. In many poorer countries, support for the old is still mainly provided through the family. Today, retirement with a pension is considered a right of the worker in many societies,
Old age because death means deliverance". "The problem of the ambiguity of old age has . . . been with us since the stage of primitive society; it was both the source of wisdom and of infirmity, experience and decrepitude, of prestige and suffering." In the Classical period of Greek and Roman cultures, old age was denigrated as a time of "decline and decrepitude". "Beauty and strength" were esteemed and old age was viewed as defiling and ugly. Old age was reckoned as one of the unanswerable "great mysteries" along with evil, pain, and suffering. "Decrepitude, which shrivels heroes, seemed worse than