Retirement, Social Support and Mental Wellbeing: A Couple-level Analysis

Nathan Kettlewell and Jack Lam ()
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Jack Lam: University of Queensland

No 13403, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Social support is increasingly acknowledged as an important resource for promoting wellbeing. We test whether social support changes around retirement. We also examine whether social support moderates dynamics in mental wellbeing around retirement and consider both own and spouse's retirement. Using longitudinal data from Australia, we find little effect of own or spouse's retirement on social support. However, in fixed-effects models, dynamics in mental wellbeing are significantly different between those with low/high social support. Using pension eligibility as an instrument, we find that own retirement causally improves mental wellbeing for women (weaker evidence for men) and by a similar degree for those with low/high social support. We also estimate responses to life satisfaction and find evidence that spill-over benefits from spousal retirement are much larger for individuals with low social support.

Keywords: couples; Australia; social support; retirement; mental wellbeing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H55 I10 J14 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-hea and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: European Journal of Health Economics, 2022, 23, 511–535

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Journal Article: Retirement, social support and mental well-being: a couple-level analysis (2022)
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