Relatore: Ludovico Carrino - King’s College London, Ca’ Foscari e DEAMS

Titolo: Later retirement, job stress and health: evidence from the new State Pension age in the UK

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of raising the State Pension age on women’s health. Exploiting a UK pension reform that increased women’s State Pension age for up to six years since 2010, we show that rising the State Pension age leads to an increase of up to 14% in the probability of depressive symptoms, alongside an increase in self-reported medically diagnosed depression and worsening physical health among women in a lower occupational grade. Our results suggest that these effects are driven by prolonged exposure to occupational physical and psychological stressors in high-strain jobs characterised by high demands and low control. Negative effects are consistent across multiple sub-components of the General Health Question (GHQ) and SF-12 scores, and robust to alternative empirical specifications, including placebo analyses for women who never worked and for men.