Retirement effect on health status and health behaviors in urban China

Abstract

This paper analyzes the causal impact of retirement in China on Body Mass Index (BMI) and weight, which are a good gauge of the risk for some diseases. Many middle income developing countries are aging very rapidly and may have to adjust the retirement age to have financially feasible government budgets. It is important to know and understand any plausible health consequences of raising the retirement age in developing countries, and which sub-populations within these countries may be most affected. By using 2011, 2013 and 2015 waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), our identification strategy uses variation in China's mandatory retirement age with a fuzzy discontinuity design to examine an exogenous shock to retirement behavior. Our study finds that retirement will increase weight and BMI among men. This effect is much larger for men with low education. The channel may be that men with low education drink more and take less vigorous exercises after they get retired. Retirement does not affect weight and BMI for women. These effects are robust with different definitions of retirement, narrow retirement bandwidth for samples as well as dropping samples with rural Hukou.

The longitudinal relationship between income and social participation among Chinese older people

“…Several possible explanations can be offered for this finding. First, despite the increase in pensions, people receive less money overall after retirement ( Feng et al, 2020 ), many participants (likely including many blue-collar workers) may have reached retirement age at T2. Notably, the pension amount varies greatly among programs in China.…”

“…Notably, the pension amount varies greatly among programs in China. For example, the Public Employee Pension program, established for civil servants and people working for public services, provides an average pension replacement after retirement of 80–90% of the pre-retirement wages, whereas the Basic Old Age Insurance program, which was established for formal employees in urban areas and began to include rural migrant workers in 2010, provides only 59.2% of employees' pre-retirement wages as pension ( Feng et al, 2020 ). Furthermore, the retirement age varies according to gender and occupation.…”

“…Furthermore, the retirement age varies according to gender and occupation. For example, the official retirement age for men is 60 years; it is 50 years for women with blue-collar jobs and 55 years for those with white-collar jobs ( Feng et al, 2020 ). Finally, people's total household incomes may have been reduced by investment losses, which were included in the calculation of total household incomes in this study.…”

The ‘Heart Kuznets Curve’? Understanding the relations between economic development and cardiac conditions

“…Obesity has also socioeconomic causes, such as income and education, and has significant economic impacts (Cawley, 2015). Social programs, such as cash transfers, and work activity have ambiguous effects on weight (Levasseur, 2019;Feng, Li, & Smith, 2020). Health specialists suggest the implementation of recommendations regarding diet and physical activity should be a top priority for all (De Backer & De Bacquer, 2004;Chow et al, 2013;Danaei et al, 2013), including economic incentives such as taxes on unhealthy food and drinks (Cawley, 2015).…”

Changes in sleep duration associated with retirement transitions: The role of naps

“…Therefore, we think that the findings for our primary study question about sleep duration after retirement are likely to be generalizable to other developing countries with a higher percentage of people working in the agricultural sectors and limited labour market regulations/retirement pension systems. An increase in total sleep time after retirement benefits people with adverse health conditions, such as hypertension (Guo et al, 2013) and diabetes (Holliday, Magee, Kritharides, Banks, & Attia, 2013), improves cognitive functions (Kronholm, Härmä, Hublin, Aro, & Partonen, 2006) and reduces mortality (Cappuccio, Cooper, D'Elia, Strazzullo, & Miller, 2011;Gallicchio & Kalesan, 2009 (Feng, Lin, & Smith, 2019).…”