تاثیر بازنشستگی در سلامت روانی در کانادا

The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of retirement on psychological wellbeing. The empirical part of this study uses seven longitudinal waves of the Canadian National Population Health Survey, spanning 1994 through 2006. To account for biases due to unobserved individual specific heterogeneity, this study deploys panel data methodologies such as fixed effect method, fixed effect logistic method, and instrumental variable fixed effect method. Using age specific retirement incentives provided by Canada's Income Security System as instruments for retirement behavior, the study finds that retirement has significant positive impact on subsequent psychological well-being. The findings of the study would substantiate the continuity theory notion that retirement may actually improve psychological well-being.

Like most other developed countries, Canada is experiencing a decrease in the age at retirement and simultaneously an increase in life expectancy. In the mid 1980s, the median retirement age in Canada was about 65 years, but it declined to 61 years by 2005. At the same time life expectancy has been on the rise in Canada: in 1921, life expectancy at age 65 was 13.3 more years, while it was 19.2 more years in 2003 (Statistics Canada, 2008). These trends imply that people are living longer in the retirement phase. This situation has implications for sustainability of the retirement system, as government will need to pay more in the form of pensions and other retirement benefits. These trends also have implications for health care expenditures. Here the question is whether retirement benefits or harms health. If retirement improves health, then early retirement may reduce health care expenditures. On the other hand, if retirement harms health, then policies that promote early retirement may actually increase health care expenditures. There are numerous studies on the impact of physical health on retirement. However, only a few studies have examined the impact of retirement on physical health, and the results are still inconclusive. A number of studies also focused on the impact of retirement on mental health and psychological well-being. However, these studies also had no conclusive result, as some studies suggest that retirement improved psychological well-being while other studies show that retirement actually has a negative impact. Studies produced conflicting results because most of the studies on retirement and psychological well-being used small samples and they also suffered from methodological problems such as endogeneity bias. This paper uses large-scale Canadian longitudinal data to estimate the impact of retirement on psychological well-being. To address the endogeneity issue, the paper utilizes sophisticated econometric techniques. This study will have important policy implications. Studies using data from Canada and other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries suggest that the provisions of social security programs themselves often provide strong incentives to leave the labor force early (Baker et al., 2003 and Baker et al., 2004). A finding that retirement positively impacts psychological well-being in Canada will mean early retirement may reduce mental health related expenditures. On the other hand, a finding that retirement harms psychological well-being will imply that early retirement incentives may actually increase mental health related expenditures and thus such a policy needs to be re-considered. This study aims to contribute to the literature in the following ways: first, this will be the first Canadian study on the relationship between retirement and psychological well-being using large-scale longitudinal data; second, unlike other studies in retirement literature, this study takes into account endogeneity resulting from the presence of time-varying unobserved factors; and third, this paper conducts separate analyses to examine whether the impact of retirement on psychological well-being differs between males and females. This paper is structured as follows: Section 1, introduction; Section 2 reviews the literature; Section 3 deals with the conceptual framework; Section 4 discusses methodology; Section 5 presents results; and Section 6 is the concluding section.

Using Canadian Longitudinal data, this study examined the impact of retirement on psychological well-being. After controlling for unobserved individual specific heterogeneity, the study finds that retirement has a significant positive effect on individual's psychological well-being. By applying the fixed effect instrumental variable method, the study also takes into account the possible bias due to reverse causality and time varying unobserved factors, and this result also suggests that retirement positively impacts psychological well-being. As a robustness check, the study utilizes a conditional fixed effect logit regression model and again finds that retirement improves psychological well-being. Further analyses suggest that retirement improves psychological well-being of both males and females. Retirement is also found to have no impact on psychological well-being of individuals in age group 45–54 while it has a significant positive effect on the well-being of individuals in the age group 55 and over. This study supports the prediction of continuity theory that retirement improves psychological well-being. According to continuity theory, retirement provides relief from the pressure of job stress and performance expectation and thereby improves psychological well-being. The result of this study is in conformity with the findings from similar studies (Charles, 2004 and Johnston and Lee, 2009). This study also supports the overall findings of two Canadian studies (Gall et al., 1997 and Thériault, 1994). From the policy perspective, if retirement has no negative impact on psychological well-being, then the current Canadian trend of early retirement is not likely to increase mental health care expenditures. It is very difficult to find instrumental variables that predict retirement but are not correlated with psychological well-being, and the validity of such instrumental variables is always questionable. It may be possible that individuals select into retirement at specific entitlement ages. In particular, people who desire additional flexible time to improve their psychological well-being may be more likely than others to choose to retire as soon as they are qualified. In such a case, the discontinuous age points will not be exogenous to psychological well-being, as individuals who choose to retire at these points are expected to see an improvement in well-being. In the future, a more detailed study can be done to examine the mechanism through which retirement impacts psychological health.