Occupation, Retirement and Cognitive Functioning
The purpose of this paper is to examine the causal impact of the duration of retirement
on cognitive functioning of male elderly workers using data from three waves of the
National Survey of Japanese Elderly (NSJE). We explore the effects of the longest
tenure job (career job) on cognitive functioning. Unlike previous studies, the focus
of this paperis on the workers job requirements rather than industry or occupation.
We merge the occupational characteristics in the 3 digit industry code of the
Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) with 288 NSJE occupations, and investigate
how occupational task requirements such as physical demands, mathematical development,
reasoning development, and language development impact on cognitive functioning after
retirement. The two step estimator we use takes account of the potential endogeneity
of the duration of retirement, using the age at which individuals are eligible to
start receiving pension benefits and whether their career job was self-employment
as instruments, and also the left-censoring of the duration of retirement. Our
empirical evidence suggest that the requirements in a peroson s career job have
statistically significant impacts on the cognitive functioning after retirement.
