Retirement Effects on Health in Europe

Abstract

What are the health impacts of retirement? As talk of raising retirement ages in pensions and social security schemes continues around the world, it is important to know both the costs and benefits for the individual, as well as the governments' budgets. In this paper we use the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) dataset to address this question in a multicountry setting. We use country-specific early and full retirement ages as instruments for retirement behavior. These statutory retirement ages clearly induce retirement, but are not related to an individual's health. Exploiting the discontinuities in retirement behavior across countries, we find significant evidence that retirement has a health-preserving effect on overall general health. Our estimates indicate that retirement leads to a 35 percent decrease in the probability of reporting to be in fair, bad, or very bad health, and an almost one standard deviation improvement in the health index. While the self-reported health seems to be a temporary impact, the health index indicates there are long-lasting health differences.

The relationship between wealth and loneliness among older people across Europe: Is social participation protective?

“…We included individuals aged 65 years or over who were not in the paid labour force (N=31,639), a subset of the original SHARE sample. This included individuals who selfreported as retired, unemployed, looking after the home or family, or permanently sick or disabled, which is consistent with previous research (Coe and Zamarro, 2011).…”

Depresión y variables asociadas en personas mayores de 50 años en España

“…No obstante, algunos estudios manifiestan que con la jubilación "normativa" decrece considerablemente el riesgo de padecer problemas de salud, sin estar asociada a mayor depresión o mal funcionamiento cognitivo 27 .…”

“…De los datos económicos, destacar que el cese involuntario de la actividad laboral incrementa el riesgo de depresión en personas de >50 años 15,26 , mientras que el cese normativo tiene un efecto beneficioso en la salud general 27 . Por otra parte, existen datos consistentes de que la prevalencia de depresión es mayor entre las personas con menores ingresos 28 .…”

Understanding the effect of retirement on health: Mechanisms and heterogeneity

“…Several studies report a significant increase in health after retirement (e.g. Charles, 2002, Johnston and Lee, 2009, Neuman, 2008, Coe and Lindeboom, 2008, Coe and Zamarro, 2011, Blake and Garrouste, 2012, De Grip et al, 2012, Latif, 2013, Insler, 2014, whereas other researchers (e.g. Dave et al, 2008, Behncke, 2012, Sahlgren, 2012) report significant negative effects on both objective and subjective health measures.…”

“…3 2 Behncke (2012) and Johnston and Lee (2009) use different datasets from the UK, whereas Charles (2002), Dave et al (2008), Coe and Lindeboom (2008), Neuman (2008) and Insler (2014) use U.S. data from the Health and Retirement study. Coe and Zamarro (2011) and Sahlgren (2012) use European cross-country data from the Study of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Blake and Garrouste (2012) use French data.…”