Retirement, social support and mental well-being: a couple-level analysis

Abstract

Social support is increasingly acknowledged as an important resource for promoting wellbeing. We test whether social support changes around retirement. We also examine whether social support moderates dynamics in mental wellbeing around retirement and consider both own and spouse's retirement. Using longitudinal data from Australia, we find little effect of own or spouse's retirement on social support. However, in fixedeffects models, dynamics in mental wellbeing are significantly different between those with low/high social support. Using pension eligibility as an instrument, we find that own retirement causally improves mental wellbeing for women (weaker evidence for men) and by a similar degree for those with low/high social support. We also estimate responses to life satisfaction and find evidence that spill-over benefits from spousal retirement are much larger for individuals with low social support.

How Retirement Affects Mental Health, Cognitive Skills and Mortality; An Overview of Recent Empirical Evidence

“…The main finding is that the postponement of the retirement age had negative mental health effects. Kettlewell & Lam (2022) use data on Australian partnered men and women and an IV-approach with the Mental Component Summary (MCS) of the SF-36 as an indicator for mental health. The main finding is that retirement improved mental health of female retirees but does not affect the mental health of male retirees.…”

“…Retirement of partnered men has positive effects on the mental health of their partner. Kettlewell & Lam (2022) use Australian data on partnered individuals finding no cross-partner mental health effects of retirement.…”

The Country By Country Ranking of Pension Systems in The World, A Multiple Discriminant Analysis Using Data from the Mercer CFA Institute’s Global Pension Index 2021.

“…Additionally, the study was agnostic about the economic wellbeing of the retirees in the pre-retirement times which information would have helped in assessing the changes that are attributable to the cessation of earnings from employment. Kettlewell and Lam (2021) conducted a study on the retirement, social support and mental wellbeing using couple-level data from retirees in Australia and found that those with high social support do experience a small but statistically significant improvement in mental wellbeing post retirement. Their study also found that spill-over benefits from spousal retirement are larger for individuals with low social support.…”

A Study on Temporal and Spatial Differences in Women’s Well-Being in an Ecologically Vulnerable Area in Northwest China

“…Both domestic and international scholars have developed indicator systems to measure the level of well-being of residents in accordance with the status of ecosystem services in various natural regions [26][27][28][29][30] since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report proposed the contribution of ecosystem services to human well-being. A review of related studies elucidated the following: 1 Currently, studies on well-being have developed a variety of indicator systems that cover health well-being [31][32][33][34][35], psychological well-being [36][37][38][39][40][41], social well-being [42][43][44][45][46], and other aspects [47,48]. There has also been some exploration into the perspective of ecological impacts [49][50][51].…”

“…In recent years, the well-being measurement of female groups has primarily focused on the exploration of subjective well-being and influencing factors in qualitative research [52][53][54][55]. systems that cover health well-being [31][32][33][34][35], psychological well-being [36][37][38][39][40][41], social well-being [42][43][44][45][46], and other aspects [47,48]. There has also been some exploration into the perspective of ecological impacts [49][50][51].…”