Workers may have gotten the message that they need to work longer in order to pay their way through retirement, but that doesn't mean that the universe is cooperating.

Indeed, according to a brief from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, although 48 percent of workers in 2018 said they planned to work past age 65 (compared with just 16 percent in 1991), 37 percent still retire earlier than they'd planned.

There are several reasons for this disconnect between intention and action, says the brief, and looks at health, employment, family and financial shocks to see how they play into the retirement picture.

Health plays the biggest role in bringing on an earlier-than-planned retirement, it finds, with job-related changes and family transitions following—but additional research is needed, since such shocks only account for about a quarter of early retirements.

Still, the disruption caused by such shocks to the plans of workers highlights how fragile such plans can be.

People's retirement plans tend to cluster around two ages—62, the earliest eligibility age for Social Security, and 65, the eligibility age for Medicare—but the brief finds that the later people plan to retire, the less likely they are to achieve their goal.

As an example, it cites the 21 percent of people who plan to retire at age 66 or later, and reveals that more than half fail to make it that far.

Two types of health shocks can disrupt retirement plans: the first is an existing health condition that strongly affects someone's ability to work, while the second is a change in health between the time retirement plans are made and the worker's planned retirement age.

When it comes to employment shocks, there are three types: voluntarily moving to a new employer; loss of a job due to layoff or a business close but followed by a new job; and loss of a job that's not followed by a new job.

Things get more complicated, naturally, when it comes to family shocks, and the study cites seven types: spousal employment/retirement; spousal health; marital status; the presence of resident children; a first grandchild; caring for a parent; and a parent moving into the respondent's home.

Oddly enough, financial shocks—defined as large fluctuations in a person's wealth—“do not seem to play a significant role” in a person retiring early.

Considering that three quarters of early retirement remain unaccounted for by any of these shocks, the brief concludes that further research is necessary into which other factors may lead to early retirement.

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