Healthier lifestyles after retirement in Europe? Evidence from SHARE

Abstract

This paper investigates changes in health behaviours upon retirement, using data drawn from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe. By exploiting changes in eligibility rules for early and statutory retirement, we identify the causal effect of retiring from work on smoking, alcohol drinking, engagement in physical activity and visits to the general practitioner or specialist. We provide evidence about individual heterogeneous effects related to gender, education, net wealth, early-life conditions and job characteristics. Our main results--obtained using fixed-effect two-stage least squares--show that changes in health behaviours occur upon retirement and may be a key mechanism through which the latter affects health. In particular, the probability of not practicing any physical activity decreases significantly after retirement, and this effect is stronger for individuals with higher education. We also find that different frameworks of European health care systems (i.e. countries with or without a gate-keeping system to regulate the access to specialist services) matter in shaping individuals' health behaviours after retirement. Our findings provide important information for the design of policies aiming to promote healthy lifestyles in later life, by identifying those who are potential target individuals and which factors may affect their behaviour. Our results also suggest the importance of policies promoting healthy lifestyles well before the end of the working life in order to anticipate the benefits deriving from individuals' health investments.

Work, retirement, and muscle strength loss in old age

“…Even if the difference between coefficients are in most cases not statistically significant, they are suggestive that not only blue‐collar workers get smaller short‐term benefits from retirement but also that they are more heavily affected by the long‐run negative effects of retirement. This pattern is consistent with findings by Celidoni and Rebba (), who use SHARE data to show that only workers not employed in physically demanding jobs increase their level of physical activities after retirement.…”

“…We speculate that changes in lifestyles after retirement may partly explain these patterns. Indeed, consistently with our evidence about a differential effect of retirement on late-life muscle strength, Celidoni and Rebba (2015) show that workers not employed in physically demanding jobs are more likely to carry out physical activities after retirement, and Godard (2016) finds that men retiring from strenuous jobs are more likely to gain weight after retirement. Also, FIGURE 4 Estimated age profiles of lowGS it for workers retiring at age 55, 60, and 65 derived from the specification with percentage decline as dependent variable.…”

Health care utilization at retirement: The role of the opportunity cost of time

“…The extensive literature on health care utilization (but only few papers focus on the effects of retirement) reports similar figures. For example, among others, Celidoni and Rebba (2017) report an average of 3.61 for the whole sample (2.5 for employees and 4.5 for retired); Dunlop et al (2000) report higher figures for Canada (4.94 males, 7.10 females, 6.11 whole sample), but the overall number of visits also included telephone consultations. Finally, Bago d'Uva and Jones (2009) estimate for the group of "high users" an average total number of visits equal to 4.05.…”

“…Using US and German data, respectively, Gorry, Gorry, and Slavov () and Eibich (), model retirement decisions jointly with healthcare utilization, but do not find any statistically significant impact of retirement. In a cross‐country analysis for 10 European countries, Celidoni and Rebba () investigate the causal effect of retiring from work on individuals' lifestyles and on doctor's visits but do not find any statistically significant effect. In contrast, Coe and Zamarro (), using retirement eligibility ages to identify the effect of transitions from employment to retirement, unemployment, or inactivity on the number of doctor's visits, report a negative effect both in the United States and in continental Europe.…”

The Mental Health Effects of Retirement

“…From an international comparative study on the effects of retiring on health and cognitive skills in 2 Some studies focus on the effects of retirement on physical health or health behaviors. See for example Nielsen (2019) and Celidoni and Rebba (2017). There are also studies that investigate the effects of retirement on a composite indicator of health that includes mental health.…”