An Empirical Study on the Health of Retirement to the Working Population—Based on China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

Abstract

With the aging of Chinese intensified, the demographic dividend is gradually less, the phenomenon of large pension gap, delay retirement to discuss fiercer. Most of the articles on the study of retirement problems, from a healthy perspective are often neglected on the basis of combing the theory of the relationship between retirement with health and the literature on the impact of retirement on health from the perspective of health empirical analysis on the effect of retirement for the elderly health. In this paper, using the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), mandatory retirement ages as instrumental variable, to study the effect of retirement for the elderly health by fuzzy regression discontinuity design (FRD). The main conclusions of this paper: First, Chinese compulsory retirement system has a significant negative impact on male health; there is no impact on female health. Second, the impact of retirement on men is mainly caused by the impact of male mental health; retirement will increase the degree of depression in men and lead to mental health decline. Thirdly, based on men’s health behavior, time use and medical use, we found that retirement does not improve the utilization medical of male; it also does not change men smoking habits and their physical exercise, but retirement will change male drinking habits, and increase their leisure time. Finally, this paper raises corresponding policy recommendations to improve personal health and better implementation of delayed retirement policies.