Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Lloyd's Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Epidemiol Health. 2022;44:e2022030. doi: 10.4178/epih.e2022030. Epub 2022 Feb 21.
The Retirement and Health Study (RHS) is Singapore's largest nationally representative cohort with over 15,000 participants (aged 45-85 years) followed across five timepoints in 10 years (2014-2024). Accounting for sample weights, the sample represents 1.2 million Singaporeans and permanent residents of a total population of 5.5 million. The RHS sought consent to link survey responses to relevant administrative data, enabling the cross-validation of self-reports with national databases. There are 10 sections in the RHS with over 400 questions, 50% of which are on respondents' physical and mental health, healthcare utilization and insurance; the remaining 50% are about employment history, retirement adequacy, wealth, and household expenditure. The RHS was set up to provide microdata to compliment administrative data for whole-of-government policy making given that Singapore will reach super-aged status by 2026. Sample findings include a need for older adults to balance between immediate financial needs and investments regarding their pension funds. Also, 86% of older adults preferred to transit into partial retirement by reducing workloads. On the health front, existing studies utilising the RHS have revealed latent classes of disabilities, and that intentions to seek employment can mitigate disability developments. Another study reported that physical disability and social isolation was projected to increase, with ethnic disparities in social functioning. Overall, the RHS will be used for evidenced-informed policy agenda setting and evaluation across domains of health, finance, retirement adequacy, social and family development.
退休和健康研究（RHS）是新加坡最大的全国代表性队列研究，拥有超过 15000 名参与者（年龄在 45-85 岁之间），在 10 年内进行了 5 次随访（2014-2024 年）。考虑到样本权重，该样本代表了 550 万总人口中 120 万新加坡公民和永久居民。RHS 寻求同意将调查回复与相关行政数据相链接，使自我报告与国家数据库交叉验证。RHS 有 10 个部分，超过 400 个问题，其中 50%是关于受访者的身心健康、医疗保健利用和保险；其余 50%是关于就业历史、退休充足性、财富和家庭支出。RHS 的成立是为了提供微观数据，以补充整个政府的行政数据，以应对新加坡将在 2026 年达到超老龄化状态的情况。样本调查结果表明，老年人需要在满足当前财务需求和投资养老金之间取得平衡。此外，86%的老年人更喜欢通过减少工作量来部分退休。在健康方面，利用 RHS 进行的现有研究揭示了残疾的潜在类别，以及寻求就业的意愿可以减轻残疾的发展。另一项研究报告称，身体残疾和社会隔离预计会增加，社会功能方面存在族裔差异。总体而言，RHS 将用于为健康、金融、退休充足性、社会和家庭发展等领域的循证政策制定和评估提供依据。
