An individual's identification of his retirement situation does not necessarily coincide with the retirement concept as defined by objective measures. Self-evaluation of retirement status by respondents to the Retirement History Study has been analyzed to discover to what extent their subjective assessment of retirement matched the situation predicted by objective measures. For those completely...

In this paper we study the economic determinants of the joint retirement process of married couples. We propose a tractable dynamic discrete choice model for retirement decisions which allows for non-trivial saving behaviour. We estimate the model on a 1% sample of Danish couples of potential retirement age drawn from a population-based administrative register. The introduction and subsequent r...

A T A G L A N C E The 27 wave of the Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS), the longest-running survey of its kind in the nation, finds that the share of American workers who are very confident in their ability to afford a comfortable retirement remains low, and some workers report that preparing for retirement is emotionally or mentally stressful. However, among retirees, confidence in their abil...

OBJECTIVES Changes in health following retirement are poorly understood. We used serial measurements to assess the effect of retirement on sleep disturbances. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. SETTING The French national gas and electricity company. PARTICIPANTS Fourteen thousand seven hundred fourteen retired employees (79% men). MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Annual survey measurements of sl...

Does retirement represent a state of relative prosperity or a time of unanticipated economic hardship? To assess whether individuals are successful in smoothing their well-being across the transition to retirement we analyse measures of relative subjective wellbeing (SWB) in the Australian HILDA Survey. Specifically, this research examines individual’s self-reported change in their standard of ...

Spousal and Survivor Benefits in Option Value Models of Retirement: An Application to Belgium1 We study retirement incentives with augmented option value model à la Stock and Wise (1990). We propose methodological extensions to better reflect the respective incentives faced by singles and couples. Our results show that a more comprehensive modelling of couples’ incentives leads to very differen...

This longitudinal study investigated the relationship between retirement transitions and subsequent psychological well-being using data on 458 married men and women (aged 50-72 years) who were either still in their primary career jobs, retired, or had just made the transition to retirement over the preceding 2 years. The findings show that the relationship between retirement and psychological w...

Two common assertions about leisure activities in retirement housing were studied: ( I ) that residence in special retirement housing for the elderly will result in more leisure activities than will residence in conventional dispersed housing, and (2) that greater participation in leisure activities is associated with a more favorable outlook on life. Two waves of interviews were conducted with...

We examine the extent to which multiple social identities are associated with enhanced health and well-being in retirement because they provide a basis for giving and receiving social support. Results from a cross-sectional study show that retirees (N = 171) who had multiple social identities following (but not prior to) retirement report being (a) more satisfied with retirement, (b) in better ...