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Pension generosity and mental wellbeing: The effect of eradicating poverty at old-age

Alexander Danzer and Natalia Danzer

VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: This paper exploits a unique shift in pension generosity to study the effect of eradicating old-age poverty on mental health. Based on a difference-in-differences set-up we show with two independent data sets from Ukraine that greater pension generosity improves subjective well-being and reduces the incidence of diagnosed depressions. Neither more available leisure time, nor higher consumption levels, nor enhanced physical health can explain the empirical mental health improvement. Instead, we suggest that the main channel for the mental health improvement is the reduced reliance on potentially stressful modes of income generation at old age, such as family household transfers, indebtedness and unpaid bills.

JEL-codes: H55 I10 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-hap
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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