Effects of retirement pensions according to contribution time and age on Brazilians' health and wellbeing

Abstract

Aging of the Brazilian population with the country's diversity of demographic and territorial characteristics motivated this study on the effects of retirement pensions on health and wellbeing. The study thus analyzes the effects of retirement pensions in Brazil by age and contribution time through measures of overall self-rated health, depressive symptoms on the CES-D scale, and household and head-of-household income. The analyses were also disaggregated by gender and locality. The method used was Propensity Score Matching with data from 9,412 individuals 50 years or older obtained from the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil), collected in the years 2015 and 2016. In overall self-rated health, there was an increase in the probability of rating health as good or excellent for women in urban areas, both for those retired by contribution time (more than 9%) and by age (more than 7%). There was a reduction in the probability of depressive symptoms for women that retired by contribution time (11%), while for men from rural areas there was a reduction of more than 16%. There were important increases in income in all the subgroups. The study aimed to help offset the lack of evidence on the effects of retirement pensions in Brazil, and the results generally suggest that the effects of retirement pensions on individuals´ health and wellbeing are beneficial but quite heterogeneous between men and women and between rural and urban areas.