Ethnoracial Disparities in Adjustment to Retirement: the Hispanic Advantage
Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: Retirement is a major life course transition, and, as such, both empirical evidence and life course theory find that retirement is related to changes in life satisfaction. Little is known, however, about racial/ethnic differences in the relationship between retirement and changes in life satisfaction. This is an important omission because racial minorities frequently have different work experiences than do whites. To that end, we use the 2004–2014 waves of the Health and Retirement Study to assess (a) racial differences in changes in life satisfaction after retirement, and (b) potential linking-mechanisms that may explain racial differences in changes in life satisfaction after retirement. We find that (a) relative to whites, Hispanics experience elevated changes life satisfaction after retirement whereas non-Hispanic blacks experiences lower changes life satisfaction; and (b) that the differences between blacks and whites is accounted for by differences in wealth and income, but that the differences between Hispanics and whites is not accounted for by differences in health, wealth, nativity status, family arrangements, preretirement job characteristics, or experiences of lifetime discrimination. These findings suggest that even when taking into consideration factors that often explain health and well-being benefits experienced by Hispanics in later life relative to non-Hispanics, Hispanics experience greater increases in life satisfaction at retirement than any other group. In this session, we discuss the implications of these findings for programs designed to enhance adjustment to retirement.
Source: Innovation in Aging
Institutions: Florida State University, Georgia State University, Boston College
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,977
OpenAlex ID: W2729741321