Stephen Nathan’s wife persuaded him to retire at age 62, telling him it was too much — and too risky — for him to continue driving 60 miles each way to and from his job in upstate New York. But ever since Nathan retired from his position as director of human resources at Hobart and William Smith Colleges nine years ago, he has remained hugely busy.

Every Monday evening Nathan, who became a volunteer firefighter after retiring, reports to his local firehouse for drills and then sleeps there as part of a weekly rotation. The firehouse is in his hometown, Fayetteville, N.Y., a suburb of Syracuse.

Another day or two each week, he drives 50 miles or so making deliveries to people in their 80s and 90s for Meals on Wheels. And then there is the occasional golf game, working out on the treadmill at the YMCA, visiting military battlefields and collecting military history books.

“I came up with this little philosophy. I wanted no longer to be a manager. I wanted to be a doer,” said Nathan, who, before his college job, was a human resources executive at an insurance company.

His unusually busy life makes clear that there is a lot a retiree can do with all that free time. But while individual retirees are probably as different as snowflakes, a deep dive into the demographic statistics of retirement shows that broader trends are shaping how retirees seek to enjoy the luxury of time — trends that confirm some popular assumptions about retirement while contradicting others.

For example, Nathan and his wife are like many empty-nesters nowadays who, unlike in the past, have opted not to pull up stakes and move to sunnier climes like Florida or Arizona. They want to continue to live near family — in this case, one of their daughters — and longtime friends. Others stay put because of the shaky economy or the difficulty of selling a home or getting a mortgage.

Work and leisure

Staying put dovetails with another big trend: the growing number of retirees continuing to do some paid part-time work, for either their old employer or a new one. A retired accountant might still do some tax returns to bring in extra money, for instance, or a retiree relying on Social Security might work at Target or Kohl’s during the holiday season to earn extra cash.

Of the 42 million Americans age 65 or older, 18.7 percent remain in the labor force. That is a sharp increase from 13.9 percent a decade ago. According to the American Time Use Survey, in which the Bureau of Labor Statistics surveyed 136,000 people about how they spent their time, Americans older than 65 who were still employed typically worked 61⁄4 hours a day.

On the other hand, the survey found that Americans older than 65 devoted 6 hours and 40 minutes a day to socializing, relaxing and leisure. That’s nearly 2 hours and 45 minutes more than Americans ages 25 to 54.

While 5 percent of those older than 65 reported sleeplessness, that age group as a whole defied the stereotype of older people requiring less sleep, reporting an average of 8 hours and 51 minutes of slumber daily.

Forty-three percent of those older than 65 said they read regularly for personal interest, devoting nearly two hours a day. In contrast, only 15 percent of those ages 25 to 54 said they read regularly for personal interest, devoting about 80 minutes a day.

About 20 percent of Americans older than 65 said they participated in sports or performed other exercise regularly, about 90 minutes each time.

Think retirees spend half their time playing golf? Think again. According to the Time Use Survey, only 1.6 percent of Americans older than 65 play golf regularly. They devote 4 hours and 20 minutes on average to the sport on the days they play. Slightly more popular is running or walking on a treadmill or using other cardiovascular equipment — men for 30 minutes on average and women for 45 minutes. (Sorry, no shuffleboard statistics.) Yoga has caught fire nationwide, but the survey showed that only 1 in 500 people 65 or older said they practiced yoga regularly.

“There is no right way to retire,” said Harvey Sterns, the director of the Institute for Lifespan Development and Gerontology at the University of Akron in Ohio. “Everyone has to cut their own personal path.”

Staying entertained

Almost 90 percent of older Americans said they regularly watched TV and movies at home, on average for 4 hours and 40 minutes a day. That compares with 3 hours and 10 minutes for Americans 25 to 54. Eleven percent of those 65 and older said they regularly played noncomputer games, like bridge or Scrabble, averaging 1 hour and 52 minutes of play.

Perhaps as a result of all that home viewing, less than 2 percent said they went to see movies or the performing arts on a typical day. Evidently many older people do not see value in driving to a theater to pay $10 or $12 a ticket to see “Fast and Furious 6” when they can watch “Homeland” on cable or “The Philadelphia Story” on Netflix.

Stacie Arkin Bennett has been an enthusiastic member of the 2 percent who regularly go to movies and theater, in part a result of her decision not to move away from the New York area after 36 years as a high school French teacher in Massapequa, N.Y. Since retiring 13 years ago, Bennett, 70, takes the train into Manhattan two or three times a week to attend plays or concerts, visit a museum or go to a movie or two.

“I love theater,” she said. “Sometimes I go with friends. I’m busy most of the time.” She said she worked out twice a week with a personal trainer, recently began piano lessons and took a walk most days. (One in 10 Americans older than 65 said they walked regularly, for 57 minutes a day on average.)

Bennett, who is divorced, decided not to move from her condominium in Massapequa even though her daughter and granddaughters, 12 and 15, live in Los Angeles. She visits them six or so times a year.

“Why didn’t I move to California?” she asked. “As much as I want to be near my family, all I’d have in California is my family, and I worry I’d be too dependent on my daughter. I have a whole network of friends where I live. I would have been disrupting my entire life if I moved there.”

As Bennett has grown older, her daughter has stepped up her pleas for her to move to California. Bennett said the notion would most likely grow on her.

“The thing that’s really different about the baby boomers from the generation before them is that the baby boomers retiring now have very few children,” said Eileen Crimmins, a professor at the Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California. “Generations before them — the parents of the baby boomers — had four or five kids each. They had a pretty good choice of where they would live when they got really old and needed assistance.”

“But the baby boomers often have only two kids,” Crimmins added, saying that gives them fewer choices on where to live. And even those who move to Florida often move back near their children as they get older. “Maybe not when you’re 65, but when you’re 85, you want someone to call who lives near you,” she said.

Other statistics on older Americans bear that out. According to the Administration on Aging, part of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, 36 percent of women and 19 percent of men age 65 and older live alone. For women 75 and older, 46 percent live alone. Once Americans reach age 65, the average life expectancy is 20.4 years for women and 17.8 years for men, helping to make male-female companionship a challenge. There are 131 women for every 100 men age 65 and older. At age 85 and above, the ratio is 203 women for every 100 men.

Seventy-two percent of men age 65 and older are married, compared with 45 percent of women. Twelve percent of men older than 65 are widowed and 37 percent of women, according to the federal statistics.

Does money buy happiness in retirement?

Retiree satisfaction very much depends on where people find themselves financially, according to a recent study by Towers Watson, a consulting firm. Among retirees with wealth between $150,000 and $500,000, including 401(k)’s, 55 percent voiced satisfaction with retirement. The figure rose to 66 percent for those with more than $500,000.

But a large majority of retirees have less than $150,000 (the median nest egg is less than half that), and of those, just 38 percent said they were satisfied with retirement.

Median income for Americans 65 and older is just $19,939, according to federal data. Thirty-six percent of people in that age group receive 90 percent or more of their income from Social Security, with annual benefits averaging $15,000 for an individual.

“In many ways, it’s a positive development that people are retiring later,” said Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “It’s the single most important lever that people can push to improve their retirement security.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20.1 percent of Americans 70 to 74 years old remain in the labor force; for those 75 or older, 7.5 percent still work.

Raymond Raskin still works four days a week as a psychoanalyst in Manhattan even though he is well past 80. And like many, he continues to work because he loves working. “I like dealing with people,” he said. “I’m a people person, and I love helping them, plumbing the depths of their minds. I wouldn’t say it’s a challenge. It’s a joy. I like my work so much that I can’t think of not doing it.

“As Freud said,” he added, “what’s important in life is work and love.”

Generational pressures are likely to continue to cloud retiree horizons. According to an AARP survey of 1,200 Americans age 45 to 65, 4 in 10 said they were responsible for caring for a parent. But just 7 percent of those surveyed said they expected to receive financial support from their children, while 17 percent expected to provide financial support to their children.

“More money flows from older age to younger,” said Sterns of the University of Akron. “Very few children are helping their parents financially. Parents are giving money for down payments for houses, for summer camp for the grandchildren, for tuition to private school.”

The sandwich generation

Baby boomers, those born from 1946 to 1964, are often called the sandwich generation because many of them juggle taking care of their children and their parents. It is increasingly evident that some of today’s retirees may be called sandwich retirees — having to help support and care for their very old parents while providing support to children in a difficult economy.

Stephen Nathan, the former human resources director, sees retirement as a time of giving.

“At the firehouse, we have an interesting group of volunteers,” he said. “We’re a no-nonsense group. We have CEOs, entrepreneurs, doctors, postal employees, laborers. The common thread is they want to give back, and they’re not afraid.”

He acknowledged that he never thought he would retire as early as he did, at 62. But his decision was influenced by a longtime mentor.

“He was going to take early retirement, but then he decided to stay on a couple of years,” Nathan said. “I asked him, ‘Why are you doing that?’ He said, ‘It’s fine.’ But he died on his birthday, on the day he would have retired. That made me think, ‘Retire when you can.’”