Spousal Retirement, Mental Health, and Household Resource Allocation: Evidence from Married Couples in China

Sixian Shu and Midori Wakabayashi

No 84, TUPD Discussion Papers from Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tohoku University

Abstract: This paper examines how spousal retirement affects psychological well-being in Chinese households using 2016–2020 China Family Panel Survey data. Exploiting statutory retirement ages as instruments in a two-stage least squares framework, we identify causal effects of retirement transitions. Results show clear gender asymmetries in these spillover effects. For men, a wife’s retirement increases life satisfaction regardless of the husband’s labor-force status, with further gains in depression and marital satisfaction once both partners retire. For women, a husband’s retirement raises depressive symptoms while the wife remains employed, but this effect disappears after her own retirement, when life satisfaction significantly improves. Mechanism analyses suggest these effects operate through gender-differentiated adjustments in household labor allocation and joint consumption patterns. These findings underscore that retirement in China is a collective family-level transition rather than an individual event, highlighting the role of institutional constraints and gender norms in shaping the welfare of aging couples.

Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2026-05
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https://hdl.handle.net/10097/0002008037

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:toh:tupdaa:84

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