A Study About The Impact Of Retirement On Life Satisfaction

With the aggravating trend of aging population,life satisfaction of the elderly and its influence factors become a more and more concerned topic.As an important event in the course of life,retirement may change the individual's social role,economic status,mental state and so on.Therefore retirement is likely to be a key factor that affects life satisfaction.Under current retirement system in China,this study analyzes the impact and mechanisms of retirement on the life satisfaction of middle-aged and elderly people,which is of great significance to grasp the change of the life quality among the elderly and the adjustment of retirement policies.Based on the national survey data of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study in 2011,2013 and 2015,this paper apply IV-ordered Probit model to empirical analysis.The retirement rate among different gender and age groups are used as instrumental variables to account for the issue of endogeneity.Firstly,the whole sample is estimated by regression analysis.Secondly,this paper further investigate the impact difference between men and women,retirees from private and public sectors,as well as groups with different retirement characteristics.Finally,from the aspects of income,social activities and mental health,the mechanism of retirement affect life satisfaction is examined by introducing interaction term into econometric equation.The main conclusions are as follows:1.Retirement generally lower the life satisfaction of middle-aged and elderly people,in which the adverse effect of early retirement or internal retirement is more obvious.2.The time-lag effect is found in the negative impact of retirement on life satisfaction.With the continuation of the retirement,the degree of influence increases first and then decreases.3.The impact of retirement on life satisfaction varies among different groups.Retirement has a significant negative impact on life satisfaction of men and employees from private sectors,but not for women and employees from public sectors.4.Further studies show that the negative influence is largely due to income decline after retirement.As for women and public institution employees,the adverse effect of income change is offset by the positive effect of mental health change and social activities participation respectively.