Kettlewell Nathan, Lam Jack
Economic Discipline Group, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families Over the Life Course, Brisbane, Australia.
Eur J Health Econ. 2022 Apr;23(3):511-535. doi: 10.1007/s10198-021-01374-1. Epub 2021 Sep 16.
Social support is increasingly acknowledged as an important resource for promoting well-being. We test whether social support changes around retirement. We also examine whether social support moderates dynamics in mental well-being around retirement and consider both own and spouse's retirement drawing on a unique longitudinal, couple-level data set from Australia. We observe descriptively no effect of own or spouse's retirement on social support. However, those with high social support do experience a small but statistically significant improvement in mental well-being post retirement. Using pension eligibility as an instrument, we find that own retirement causally improves mental well-being for women 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 larger for individuals with low social support.
