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Retirement and memory in Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2015

LAURA BIANCHINI  and
MARGHERITA BORELLA
LAURA BIANCHINI
Affiliation:
Department ESOMAS, University of Torino and CeRP (Collegio Carlo Alberto), Italy.
MARGHERITA BORELLA*
Affiliation:
Department ESOMAS, University of Torino and CeRP (Collegio Carlo Alberto), Italy. Netspar, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
*
Address for correspondence: Margherita Borella, Department ESOMAS, University of Torino, Corso Unione Sovietica 218 bis, 10134, Torino, Italy E-mail: margherita.borella@unito.it
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Abstract

We investigate the effect of retirement on memory using the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The availability of a panel data-set allows individual heterogeneity to be controlled for when estimating the effect of transitions into retirement on a commonly employed memory measure, word recall. We control for endogeneity of the retirement decision applying an instrumental variable technique to our fixed-effects transformation. Our main finding is that, conditional on the average non-linear memory age path of the typical individual, time spent in retirement has a positive effect on word recall.

Keywords

cognitive functioningretirementpanel estimation
Type
Articles
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 36 , Issue 7 , August 2016 , pp. 1434 - 1458
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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