Mental Health, Lifestyle and Retirement

This chapter presents a mediation model that aims to disentangle the indirect from the direct effects of retirement on health, considering the mediating role of lifestyles. The model is applied to the risk of depression, and physical inactivity is assumed to potentially mediate the effect of retirement. The results indicate that there is a significant indirect effect via the mediator, albeit relatively small in comparison to the direct effect. The analysis highlights the importance of further exploring the influence of lifestyle factors in the relationship between retirement and health, in order to gain a better understanding of the potential pathways through which retirement impacts health.