A generation ago retirement decisions were fairly straight forward. Married couples simply looked at the husband's retirement benefits and how they affected their future. But back then, says Richard W. Johnson, author of the study, How Closely Do Spouses Coordinate their Retirement Decisions, few married women worked. Today, many women have accumulated substantial retirement benefits in their own names - a fact that makes coordinating retirement more difficult. Johnson writes that evidence shows that "couples like to retire together and, since husbands tend to be older than their wives, the increased labor force participation of women may lead to later retirement of men".

A survey included in the study found that 20 percent of married couples retired the same year.