Retirement, happiness, and health in Japan

While health effects of retirement have been well studied so far, previous findings remain inconclusive, and mechanisms underlying the linkage between retirement and health are unclear. This can be driven by regional or cohort heterogeneity as well as methodological differences, such as outcome measures and identification strategies; thus, much evidence needs to be accumulated. Utilising a national household survey conducted every year in 2004-2019 in Japan (the Japan Household Panel Survey), we evaluate the effects of retirement among Japanese adults aged 50-75 on their happiness and health in addition to other outcomes that could attribute to happiness or health changes (e.g. health behaviours, time use for some activities, and the expenses by item). As outcomes are not measured every year, we analyse 4,340-7,902 person-year observations by 756-1,389 individuals with the necessary information from 2009. To deal with the potential endogeneity of retirement, we adopt an instrumental variable approach utilising changes in retirement policy and public pension eligible age. Consequently, instruments seem valid only for men, and we find that retirement increases male retirees’ happiness and decreases psychological stress while effects on other health measures are not observed. Although their satisfaction with their income decline, perhaps because of the loss of their wage income, they tend to increase the proportion of expenses for cultural and recreational activities. Enhancement in personal life quality by more leisure activities and stress reduction from work, rather than improvements in health behaviours and physical health, may be key to understanding health benefits in retirement.

A Simulation Study of the Effect of Delayed Retirement on Welfare of the Elderly: Evidence from China

In order to cope with population aging and emerging labor shortages, the Chinese government may soon introduce a policy to address this problem by raising the normal retirement age. However, the effects of planning for delayed retirement on the welfare of the elderly remain unknown. From an intergenerational support perspective, we develop a dynamic optimization model that can simulate changes in the welfare of the elderly over the years under different delayed retirement scenarios. Simulation results show that delaying retirement will produce a detrimental effect on old-age welfare. We further analyze strategies to mitigate this adverse effect and improve people’s welfare. First, the delayed retirement policy should raise the pension replacement rate, which could transfer part of the social welfare improvements from delayed retirement to the elderly through the transfer payment mechanism. Second, when adopting a defined-contribution pension system, the delayed retirement could increase the welfare of the elderly and the social well-being. Implications for future research and public policies concerning welfare effects of delayed retirement are discussed.

Will Delayed Retirement Affect the Health of Chinese Workers? A Study from the Perspective of Sustainability of Physical Health

This article presents the important research findings of our study on whether delayed retirement will affect the health of Chinese workers from the perspective of sustainability of physical health. The treatment group is those who continue to work after the current statutory retirement age and the control group are those who no longer work after current statutory retirement age, and the physical health of these people is used as a dependent variable. The samples are selected from the following six regions of China: Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Beijing, Zhengzhou, and Shenyang. Quantitative studies of physical health status of the samples are carried out. The study illustrates that for female manual workers who are younger than 63 years old, female non-manual workers who are younger than 66 years old, male manual workers who are younger than 64 years old, and male non-manual workers who are younger than 67 years old, delaying retirement, and continuing to stay in work has no effect on their physical health. After these chronological age stages, however, it has significant impact on their health. These research findings have significant impact and value for the design of China’s delayed retirement policy.

ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF POLICY ADOPTED BY CHINA FOR ITS AGING POPULATION

With China’s rapidly aging population, this paper constructs a policy model using overlapping generation (OLG) model and the computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling to analyze the second-child policy and delaying retirement policy. Our research findings suggest that considering the short-term effects, delaying the retirement age imposes a greater impact on the economy than the second-child policy. Its economic impact increases initially, but then decreases to a stable level showing a diminishing influence. In the long term, the second-child policy has greater ability to boost the economy than the delaying retirement age policy and its economic impact gets stronger. From an industrial output perspective, the two policies exert greater influence on agriculture, light industry, finance and service sector than on construction and heavy industries. From an industrial import and export perspective, the two policies have great influence on finance, electric power, and fossil energy more than they do on the agricultural sector. From a monetary perspective, the impacts are greater on household income followed by the government income and corporate income, respectively. The policies also make a bigger difference to fixed capital than to changes in deposits and loans.

Are Women Willing to Delay Their Retirement? A Research on 270 Female Teachers in Inner Mongolia of China

Women’ retirement age is earlier than men in China, which has a negative effect on the problem-solving of aging society and the protection of women’s rights and interests. Therefore, prolonging the retirement age for women has become an important policy choice to alleviate the above problems. But are women themselves willing to delay their retirement? What factors effect women’s intention to delay their retirement? Those should be an important basis for the decision-making of a new retirement policy. This paper explores female delayed retirement intention by selecting the group of female teachers which is an important category of professional women in China. Taking 270 female teachers in Inner Mongolia of China as samples, this paper analyzes the effect of personal, occupational, and policy factors on female teachers’ delayed retirement intention. The results show that the health, children, monthly income, cumulative length of working, professional title and work units have a statistically significant impact on female teachers’ delayed retirement intention. Accordingly, this article puts forward policy implications on gender equity including eliminating the gender difference of retirement age, making flexible retirement policy and protecting women’s occupational interests.