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Claudia Senik

Retirement and Unexpected Health Shocks

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Journal Article

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Bénédicte Apouey, Cahit Guven, Claudia Senik. Retirement and Unexpected Health Shocks. Economics and Human Biology, 2019, 33, pp.116-123. ⟨10.1016/j.ehb.2019.01.009⟩. ⟨halshs-02072596⟩
Topic: Health Economics
Bénédicte Apouey, Cahit Guven and Claudia Senik
Economics and Human Biology
2019

Is retirement good for your health? We complement previous studies by exploring the effect of retirement on unexpected health evolution. Using panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (2001-2014), we construct measures of the mismatch between individual expected and actual health evolution (hereafter “health shocks”). In our approach, reverse causation running from health shocks to retirement is highly unlikely, because we look at shocks that happen after retirement, and those shocks are, by definition, unanticipated. We find that retirement decreases the probability of negative shocks (by approximately 16% to 24% for men and 14% to 23% for women) while increasing the likelihood of positive shocks (by 9% to 14% for men and 10% to 13% for women). This result is robust to the use of different lead-lag structures and of alternative measures of health change. Our findings are thus consistent with a positive impact of retirement on health.