Would It Kill You to Retire? Testing Short/Long Term/Recurrent Effects of Retirement on All-Cause Mortality Risk

Abstract

This study traced all-cause mortality risk over the course of retirement and tested whether re-retirement impacts mortality risk differently than the first time. The study differentiated retirement on whether prompted by health (health retirement) or not (non-health retirement). Based on data from 1992 to 2016 Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the sample consists of 7747 women and 7958 men who were working at the baseline. Adjusting for physical health before/after retirement, the discrete-time logit model found increased mortality risk within the first year of non-health retirement only for men, regardless of physical health changes. Re-retirement did not raise mortality risk further. Furthermore, health retirement increased mortality for men and women but substantially less after their surviving the first year. The findings urge future study to explore non-physical pathways of an immediate mortality increase for men in retirement, as well as the monitoring of population trends in health retirement and its antecedents.