Does Retirement Change What Makes Us Satisfied With Life? An Examination of Response Shift With a Matched Control Group Design

Research has shown that life satisfaction depends on a person's resources and that retirement is associated with resource gains and losses. We examine if these resources contribute equally to life satisfaction before and after the retirement transition. Coming from the psychological concept of response shifts, we conceptualize an adjustment process to major life changes in which also the association between different resources and life satisfaction could be subject of change with retirement. Data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (2004-2016, every 2 years) were used to study people who retired over the course of 2 consecutive waves. Using propensity score matching, we identified n = 991 retirees and a matched control group of n = 991 people with similar sociodemographic characteristics but who were continuously working. We then used a seemingly unrelated regression model to examine how the association between life satisfaction and economic (income, assets), personal (morbidity, functional limitations, club membership), and social-relational resources (network size, partner, parenthood, grandparenthood) changed from the pre- to postretirement wave. Retirement was associated with a slight increase in life satisfaction and only moderate to minor declines in income and club memberships. We found retirement-related changes in the predictor strength for financial resources (i.e., decline for income, increase for assets) but not for the other resources. In sum, the study provides some evidence that retirees reprioritize the importance of economic resources only for their overall life satisfaction at retirement. We discuss the findings in light of (economic) social inequality which points to potential for further research.