The Influence of Old-age Retirement on Health: Causal Evidence from the Finnish Register Data

Tero Kuusi, Pekka Martikainen and Tarmo Valkonen

No 67, ETLA Working Papers from The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy

Abstract: Abstract We quantify the impact of old-age retirement on health using longitudinal Finnish register data for the period 2000–2012, which allows for a strict isolation of the effects of transition from work to retirement for both mental and physical health indicators. We use the lowest statutory eligibility age for full old-age pensions, 63 years, as an instrument in FE-IV estimation to ensure causal inference. We find that (1) retirement moderately decreases the use of antidepressants, especially for women; (2) the beneficial effects of retirement on the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal conditions are smaller and more diffused; (3) there is no robust evidence that retirement effects vary systematically among socioeconomic groups, although more robust declines in musculoskeletal diseases were observed among manual-labour men; and (4) the beneficial effects in antidepressant use can be extended to apply to most Finns retiring at ages 62–64 based on our test of external validity.

Keywords: Health; Health behaviour; Retirement; Retirement policies; Demographic economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I12 J18 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2019-04-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dem, nep-eur, nep-hea and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The influence of old-age retirement on health: Causal evidence from the Finnish register data (2020)
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