Retirement and cognitive decline: a longitudinal analysis using SHARE data

Martina Celidoni
Chiarra Dal Bianco
Guglielmo Weber

Published on 5 December 2017

We compute a measure of cognitive decline that predicts well the onset of dementia and investigate how retirement affects cognition given age, education and gender. Retirement at first is beneficial, but can be detrimental to cognition later. In the long run, retirement speeds up cognitive decline if one retires at statutory age, retirement also has a protective role if one takes early retirement.

We show that a new measure of cognitive decline, that can be computed in longitudinal surveys where respondents perform the same recall memory tests over the years, is highly predictive of the onset of dementia. Using SHARE data, we investigate the way retirement affects cognitive decline over time controlling for age, education and other confounding factors. We find that retirement has a long-term detrimental effect on cognition for individuals who retire at the statutory eligibility age. It plays instead a protective role for those who retire on an early retirement scheme.