 Retirement and cognitive development in the Netherlands: Are the retired really inactive?Andries de Grip, Arnaud Dupuy (), Jelle Jolles and Martin van Boxtel Economics & Human Biology, 2015, vol. 19, issue C, 157-169 Abstract: This paper uses longitudinal data to analyze the relation between retirement and cognitive development in the Netherlands. Controlling for individual fixed effects and lagged cognition, we find that retirees face lower declines in their cognitive flexibility than those who remain employed, which appears to be persistent 6 years after retirement. However, the information processing speed of low-educated retirees declines faster. The magnitude of both changes in cognition is such that retirees appear 5–6 years younger in terms of cognitive flexibility, and older in terms of information processing speed. We show that these relationships between retirement and cognitive development cannot be explained by (1) feeling relieved from routine work, (2) changes in mood, (3) changes in lifestyle, and (4) changes in blood pressure. The decline in information processing speed after retirement particularly holds for the low educated. This could increase the social costs of an aging society. Keywords: Cognitive decline; Labor market activity; Retirement (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:19:y:2015:i:c:p:157-169 DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2015.08.004 Access Statistics for this article Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier |
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