تجزیه و تحلیل رفاه در بازنشستگی: نقش و حقوق بازنشستگی، بهداشت، و بازنشستگی داوطلبانه

This paper examines a wide range of determinants of retiree well-being of retirees. Using data from the 2000 Health and Retirement Study, increases in economic factors such as income lead to higher well-being, although relative income has a larger effect than absolute income. The strongest predictors are the voluntariness of entering retirement, pension characteristics, and health. Retirees “forced” to retire or have defined contribution pensions or bad health have significantly lower well-being. The results suggest a more nuanced approach in addressing retiree well-being than just a focus on the economic well-being of retirees.

Financial or economic well-being in retirement has been of increasing interest for economic researchers. The policy implications are large. As the baby boom generation nears retirement, understanding the determinants of economic well-being enables policy makers to evaluate and possibly reform present retirement institutions, such as public and private pension programs, as well as potentially generate new institutions to meet the demands of the soon to be rapidly increasing retirement population. Of particular interest in this field has been the focus on retirement income adequacy, that is, the financial resources retirees need to be above some minimal level. While this area of research is important, focusing on just the economic well-being of individuals may miss other factors that influence general well-being. Indeed, there has been relatively little research on other aspects of well-being for retirees in the economics literature. This is a bit surprising given the recent increased interest by labor economists in examining the well-being of workers (i.e. overall job satisfaction or satisfaction with some aspect of the job such as pay and promotion prospects) and of people in general ( Frey and Stutzer, 2002a). This paper, therefore, extends the literature in two ways. First, while there have been several studies of subjective retiree well-being, they tend to be narrowly focused on just a few correlates. This paper using a large group of covariates from the 2000 Health and Retirement Study, in order to compare relative effects of socio-demographic, economic, and noneconomic determinants of well-being. This larger set of determinants come from key findings in the job satisfaction and economics of well-being literatures. In general, the findings are that economic factors such as income and wealth positively impact well-being, although the effects are larger for increases in relative income compared to absolute income. Noneconomic factors such as whether retirees chose to retire or not, the health of retirees, and the riskiness of employer pensions, however, have much larger marginal effects on well-being in general, suggesting that the focus by many on the economic well-being of retirees are only looking at part of the story. A second innovation of this paper is that for the first time in the literature examines whether behavior of retirees changes over time in response to lower levels of well-being. Results here suggest that retirees with low levels of well-being do change their behavior through changing their place of residence or going back to work or changing marital status. The paper is organized as follows. The next section reviews the economics literature on well-being measures, both in the job and in life. The third section explains the data and methodology used in the research, while the fourth section reviews the results. A final section summarizes the study and offers areas of future research.

Understanding the factors that determine well-being of retirees is an important economic and policy topic. Although most previous studies examine only economic well-being, this study examines a broader measure of well-being to examine if other determinants than economic well-being measures are important. The results show that while economic well-being (as measured by income and wealth) does increase overall well-being, the effect of income is a nuanced one. On the one hand, the effect of an increase in income on retirement satisfaction is quite small, even for relatively large increases in income, suggesting that since many of the elderly are not at poverty levels, the increased income does not generate significantly increased well-being. On the other hand, as is found in other research on subjective well-being, relative income does play a significant role. Retirees seem to value having income above the typical amount, particularly in terms of relative pension income, but also for Social Security income. These show the critical importance of such forms of income to the overall well-being of this demographic group. This said, three other factors stand out as having a more important effect on well-being. The first is the reason for retirement. If individuals say that they voluntarily retired, they express much higher levels of well-being compared to those who did not voluntarily retire. It is likely that if they retired before they had expected to, financial or psychological preparations for retirement may not have been fully completed, leading to lower well-being in retirement. Indeed, the effects of involuntary retirement may actually be greater than reported here since the involuntary retired also have lower levels of pension, Social Security, earned, and other household income which would decrease satisfaction even further. The second major factor is health. Unsurprisingly, those with poor health also experience dramatically lower levels of well-being. Although neither of these factors are controllable from a policy point of view, they do indicate areas where more research could be done to help assure higher levels of well-being for retirees. The final interesting factor is, even after controlling for pension income and wealth, retirees still have preferences on the type of pension they have. Those with a defined benefit pension, or both a defined benefit and contribution plan report significantly higher levels of well-being than those with no pension or only a defined contribution pension, showing the relative risk averseness of this group. The relative importance of these well-being determinants indicates areas of importance for public policy makers and areas of further research for economists. Indeed, while this study has been done to offer a general assessment of the factors that determine retiree well-being, further research is certainly warranted. One area of research would be to analyze retirement satisfaction in more dynamic context. For example, does retirement satisfaction change over time and if so, what factors influence those changes? Do retirees who are initially dissatisfied with retirement, learn to accept their retirement and increase their satisfaction? Are there other behavior changes in addition to the ones analyzed here that impact retirement satisfaction? How does declining health and the impact of health insurance impact retirement satisfaction? More detailed examination of the three main determinants, voluntariness of retirement, health and pension characteristics would also serve as important extensions to this work.