The gendered impact of the National Pension Scheme on late-life economic well-being: evidence from the Korean retirement and income study

Social Participation Through the Retirement Transition: Differences by Gender and Employment Status

This study examines how retirees' formal and informal social participation change over time and investigates gendered differences. Seven waves of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing track the frequency of social participation. A comparison group of employed individuals, weighted with coarsened exact matching, controls for age and time trends, and mixed model regressions estimate changes over time. Retirees show a gradual decline in the frequency of meeting friends and an abrupt decrease in the frequency of attending a social gathering, compared to their working peers. These trends are much stronger for men than women, and compound pre-existing gender differences in social participation. The more severe decline in the social participation of men is of great concern and points to the persistence of gendered employment structures into the retirement transition, putting Korean retirees at risk of social isolation and related health deterioration.

Labor Participation of Retirement-Aged Workers: Understanding the Influencing Mechanism of Health Status and Social Pension Insurance Participation

BACKGROUND

Delayed retirement initiative is taken as one of the proposed solutions to population aging. Rare research attention has been paid to determinants in decisions-making of late retirement.

METHOD

This study applies data from CHARLS survey (2018) that traces the health status among older adults in China, and implements the stepwise multiple regression analysis adjusted with robust standard errors on individual level.

RESULTS

The difficulty in instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) and chronic conditions could increase the intention of retirement-aged workers to withdraw from late career participation; and the overlay of both would interact to reinforce such intention. Besides, the employment-related social pension participation could further strengthen the jointly contributing effect of both on withdrawal from late career participation.

CONCLUSION

The triple interaction mechanism in retirement-aged workers' decisions of late retirement needs considering in the policy formulation of delayed retirement initiative.