Institution of Population and Labor Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China.
School of Public Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
Int J Health Plann Manage. 2021 Sep;36(5):1697-1713. doi: 10.1002/hpm.3240. Epub 2021 Jun 1.
After 2020, with Chinese baby boomers growing old, more and more working people will step into retirement. What kind of influence retirement behaviour will have on the mental health of the older adults and whether the existing findings of retirement on the mental health of the older adults are applicable to China's current conditions? The answers are related to the improvement of the well being of older adults and future policy orientation. Based on the China Family Tracking Survey data in 2016 and 2018, the paper employed the Ordinary Least Squares, Two Stage Least Squares, and Propensity Score Matching methods to investigate the effect of retirement on the mental health of older adults in China. Results show that retirement can significantly reduce the depression and has a positive impact on the their mental health, and no chronic diseases, poor economic status and shorter education years are conducive to improve mental health of the elderly. Further, the mechanisms differ between the sexes that while exercise is a positive mediator for both sexes, reading and family dinners are positive mediators for men but not for women.
2020 年后，随着中国婴儿潮一代步入老年，越来越多的在职人员将退休。退休行为将对老年人的心理健康产生何种影响，以及现有关于退休对老年人心理健康影响的研究结果是否适用于中国当前的情况？这些问题与提高老年人的幸福感和未来政策方向息息相关。本文基于 2016 年和 2018 年的中国家庭追踪调查数据，运用普通最小二乘法、两阶段最小二乘法和倾向得分匹配方法，考察了退休对中国老年人心理健康的影响。研究结果表明，退休会显著降低老年人的抑郁程度，对其心理健康有积极影响，且无慢性病、较差的经济状况和较短的受教育年限有利于改善老年人的心理健康。此外，性别之间的作用机制存在差异，运动对男女都有积极的中介作用，而阅读和家庭聚餐对男性有积极的中介作用，但对女性没有。
