By Louis Compton, Magdalena Walbaum, David R. Sinclair, Gemma Spiers, Barbara Hanratty, Raphael Wittenberg

Background: The UK aimed to prolong the working lives of women by introduced a policy raising women’s state pension age (SPA) from 60 to 66. The impact of involuntary prolonged employment on individual’s health and well-being is debated. We explore how the well-being, mental and physical health of the women impacted by the policy has been affected.

Methods: We used data from the first 12-waves of the longitudinal Understanding Society survey dataset. Using heterogeneous difference-in-difference models with regression adjustment we compared the outcomes of cohort of women affected by the policy born in financial years 1950/51-1955/56 to those unaffected by the policy born in 1949/50.

Findings: Our sample consisted of 16,251 observations across 1,832 women. Women impacted by the policy experienced better well-being and mental functionality, compared to those unaffected by the policy. This impact was significant specifically for the 1952/53 and 1953/54 cohorts and for women in professional and managerial occupations. The policy did not impact physical functionality. A robustness check using an unaffected male sample showed no such impact.

Interpretation: Women impacted by the SPA increase appeared to have better well-being and mental functionality compared to women not affected by the policy. Trends in impacts appeared similar across sub-groups defined by job type. Limited statistical power for the sub-group analysis meant findings should be interpreted with caution.

Source: SSRN