Retirement, social support and mental well-being: a couple-level analysis

Social support is increasingly acknowledged as an important resource for promoting well-being. We test whether social support changes around retirement. We also examine whether social support moderates dynamics in mental well-being around retirement and consider both own and spouse’s retirement drawing on a unique longitudinal, couple-level data set from Australia. We observe descriptively no effect of own or spouse’s retirement on social support. However, those with high social support do experience a small but statistically significant improvement in mental well-being post retirement. Using pension eligibility as an instrument, we find that own retirement causally improves mental well-being for women and by a similar degree for those with low/high social support. We also estimate responses to life satisfaction and find evidence that spill-over benefits from spousal retirement are larger for individuals with low social support.