Bruce BassiRetirement and mental health: does social participation mitigate the association? A fixed-effects longitudinal analysis Population aging is occurring worldwide and an increasing number of older adults are engaging in work in late life.
In Japan, the labor force participation rate among people aged 65 years or older was 21.3% in 2014, which ranked 7th among all OECD countries, and the population of older workers increased from 4.8 million in 2004 to 6.8 million in 2014.
To maintain both the quality of life of each older individual and the financial sustainability of healthcare and long-term care systems, preventing physical and mental impairments is the key goals of public health measures for the aged. Specifically, the maintenance of mental health counts as it could be strongly affected by the stressful life events that are likely to happen in older ages.
There are several potential mechanisms through which retirement may have adverse impact on mental health. Above and beyond the immediate reduction in income, social role theory posits that retirement results in the loss of many non-financial benefits of work, such as opportunities for health-promoting social contacts and access to social support that can buffer the adverse effects of stress. Activity theory also posits that the transition to retirement results in reduced wellbeing for individuals for whom work provided meaning in life.
In the study examined the impact of changes in working status on changes in mental health using Japanese community-dwelling adults aged ≥65 years participating in the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study between 2010 and 2013. Between-waves changes in working status (“Kept working”, “Retired”, “Started work”, or “Continuously retired”) were used to predict changes in depressive symptoms measured by the Geriatric Depression Scale.
The variables studied including household income, marital status, instrumental activities of daily living, incidence of serious illnesses and family caregiving.
The study showed that the transition to retirement in both men and women and sustained retirement in men were associated with increased depressive symptoms among Japanese older adults. The associations between retirement and increased depressive symptoms remained after additionally adjusting for changes in social contacts and social support, suggesting that they did not mediate the impact of retirement on mental health at least among Japanese older adults. There was a statistically non-significant trend that men from higher occupational class backgrounds appeared to be less influenced by sustained retirement, whereas we did not find such a trend among women. No interaction was found between changes in employment status and changes in marital status.
