Retirement and Cognitive Development: Are the Retired Really Inactive?

Andries de Grip, Arnaud Dupuy (), Jelle Jolles and Martin van Boxtel

No 2013-11, LISER Working Paper Series from Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)

Abstract: This paper uses longitudinal test data to analyze the relation between retirement and cognitive development. Controlling for individual fixed effects and lagged cognition, we find that retirees face greater declines in information processing speed than those who remain employed. However, remarkably, their cognitive flexibility declines less, an effect that appears to be persistent 6 years after retirement. Both effects of retirement on cognitive development are comparable to the effect of a five to six-year age difference. Controlling for changes in blood pressure, which are negatively related to cognitive flexibility, we still find lower declines in cognitive flexibility for retirees. Since the decline in information processing speed after retirement holds particularly for the low educated, activating these persons after retirement could lower the social costs of an aging society.

Keywords: Cognitive decline; Labor market activity; Retirement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2013-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dem, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Retirement and Cognitive Development: Are the Retired Really Inactive? (2012)
Working Paper: Retirement and cognitive development: are the retired really inactive? (2012)
Working Paper: Retirement and cognitive development: are the retired really inactive? (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:irs:cepswp:2013-11

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