Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Mental Retirement

Contents:

Author Info

  • Susann Rohwedder

    ()

Abstract

Some studies suggest that people can maintain their cognitive abilities through "mental exercise." This has not been unequivocally proven. Retirement is associated with a large change in a person's daily routine and environment. In this paper, the authors propose two mechanisms how retirement may lead to cognitive decline. For many people retirement leads to a less stimulating daily environment. In addition, the prospect of retirement reduces the incentive to engage in mentally stimulating activities on the job. They investigate the effect of retirement on cognition empirically using cross-nationally comparable surveys of older persons in the United States, England, and 11 European countries in 2004. They find that early retirement has a significant negative impact on the cognitive ability of people in their early 60s that is both quantitatively important and causal. Identification is achieved using national pension policies as instruments for endogenous retirement.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/2009/RAND_WR711.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by RAND Corporation Publications Department in its series Working Papers with number 711.

as in new window
Length: 26 pages
Date of creation: Oct 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ran:wpaper:711

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 1776 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, California 90407-2138
Phone: 310-393-0411
Fax: 310-393-4818
Email:
Web page: http://www.rand.org/pubs/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: cognition; retirement; human capital; international comparison; HRS; SHARE; ELSA;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Maes, Marjan & Stammen, Benjamin, 2011. "The impact of (early) retirement on the subsequent physical and mental health of the retired: a survey among general practitioners in Belgium," Working Papers 2011/03, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management.
  2. Norma B. Coe & Gema Zamarro, 2008. "Retirement Effects on Health in Europe," Working Papers 588, RAND Corporation Publications Department.
  3. Hanming Fang & Lauren Nicholas & Daniel Silverman, 2010. "Cognitive Ability and Retiree Health Care Expenditure," Working Papers wp230, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
  4. Hélène Blake & Clémentine Garrouste, 2012. "Collateral effects of a pension reform in France," Working Papers halshs-00703706, HAL.
  5. Lelkes, Orsolya, 2012. "Happier and less isolated: internet use in old age," MPRA Paper 42546, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  6. Helene Blake; & Clementine Garrouste, 2012. "Collateral effects of a pension reform in France," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 12/16, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
  7. Bonsang, Eric & Adam, Stéphane & Perelman, Sergio, 2012. "Does retirement affect cognitive functioning?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 490-501.
  8. Esteban Calvo & Natalia Sarkisian & Christopher Tamborini, 2011. "Searching for schools in a low quality market: Evidence from Chile," Working Papers 17, Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universidad Diego Portales.
  9. Guven, Cahit & Lee, Wang-Sheng, 2011. "Height and Cognitive Function among Older Europeans: Do People from "Tall" Countries Have Superior Cognitive Abilities?," IZA Discussion Papers 6210, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  10. Hélène Blake & Clémentine Garrouste, 2012. "Collateral effects of a pension reform in France," PSE Working Papers halshs-00703706, HAL.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ran:wpaper:711

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Benson Wong).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.