Retirement represents a major transition in life as it entails lifestyle changes, particularly in relation to physical mobility, mental engagement, dietary habits, and social engagement, which can affect the physical and mental wellbeing of the aging population. With this rationale, several studies have investigated the causal effect of retirement on various mental and physical wellbeing indicators. Interestingly, these studies find conflicting evidence: positive effects stem from continued physical mobility, a stable flow of regular income, increased life satisfaction, and the preservation of self-esteem through involvement in productive societal roles; negative effects tend to arise from work related stress and a reduction in leisure and family time. The consensual evidence on the subject is however limited. Furthermore, almost all studies relate to a nonCanadian context (USA, Australia, Japan, and some European countries), but these too are limited by small samples that are not always representative at thenational level, lack of attention to reverse causality in the relationship between retirement and health, and lack of adequate controls due to data limitations. There are only three studies pertaining to Canada which are rather outdated and fail to adequately address the reverse causality and selfselection problems in order to derive unbiased estimates of the causal effect of retirement on physical and mental wellbeing.

In this research project, we utilize data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), which is nationally representative and consists of information on more than 50,000 senior citizens who are followed in subsequent waves of data collection. This data set allows us to fill gaps in the literature on retirement and its impact on wellbeing in at least three important ways. First, it follows individuals before, during, and after their retirement, thereby permitting to study the transition in wellbeing over time with and without retirement. Second, the longitudinal characteristics of the data allow us to control for unobserved individual level characteristics that might be related to both wellbeing and retirement. Third, and most importantly, the data set contains extensive information on retirement that includes, in particular, the reasons for retirement, enabling us to address the self-selection problem in ways not possible by earlier data sets. This information is critical for us to separate between respondents who retired due to health-related reasons and those who did not, thereby affording us a unique opportunity to isolate the exogenous source of variation in wellbeing. In employing the CLSA data, we propose to conduct a multivariate analysis of the effect of retirement on various indicators of physical and mental health such as the ability to move around and function independently, morbidity, and mental health indicators of the elderly population while controlling for other factors such as age, race, gender, socioeconomic status, and marital status that may affect the health of the population under study. We also propose to investigate the differential impact of retirement on health by gender, type of employment, type of retirement (full versus partial), and the education level of the retirees.

Although Canada does not have a mandatory retirement age, there are incentives built into the income security programs of Canada such as the National Pension Plan and Old Age Security that encourage retirement at a particular age. The findings of the study will help policy makers justify these incentives or provide an argument for altering the existing incentives. The findings may also be useful for individuals in deciding whether to choose to retire or continue to work.

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In this research project, I aim to answer the following questions:
1) Why has the human security paradigm with its emphasis on public health not been institutionalized in the national and global security frameworks?
2) The Covid-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of the fact that the nature of threats to security has changed. What is the scope of institutionalizing health security in national and international security paradigms today?
3) What is Canada’s role in the context of shifting global order to institutionalize global health security?

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