Does Retirement Change Health Behaviors?
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of retirement on health behaviors and intentions relating to those behaviors for Japanese men. The health behaviors investigated relate to alcohol and tobacco consumption, and physical exercise. This paper uses data from the first 15 waves of the Longitudinal Survey of Middle-aged and Elderly Persons (LSMEP) to estimate regression models explaining these health behaviors and intentions. An instrumental variable estimator using instruments constructed from the eligibility ages for various aspects of the Japanese pension system is used to account for the endogeneity of retirement and household income. Individual heterogeneity is dealt with by using a fixed effects estimator. Retirement has no effect on the extent to which individuals report that they will take care not to drink too much, nor smoke too much, but there is a positive impact on their resolve to engage in a sufficient amount of exercise. Retirement also leads to a decline in the proportion of respondents drinking alcohol in more than moderate amounts. The proportion of men who are smoking falls and the number of cigarettes smoked is reduced, while the proportion engaging in moderate amounts of exercise increases after retirement. Changes in income explain little of the health behaviors observed.
