Causal Effects of the Timing of Life-course Events: Age at Retirement and Subsequent HealthShow others and affiliations
2020 (English)In: Sociological Methods & Research, ISSN 0049-1241, E-ISSN 1552-8294, Vol. 49, no 1, p. 216-249Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
In this article, we combine the extensive literature on the analysis of life-course trajectories as sequences with the literature on causal inference and propose a new matching approach to investigate the causal effect of the timing of life-course events on subsequent outcomes. Our matching approach takes into account pre-event confounders that are both time-independent and time-dependent as well as life-course trajectories. After matching, treated and control individuals can be compared using standard statistical tests or regression models. We apply our approach to the study of the consequences of the age at retirement on subsequent health outcomes, using a unique data set from Swedish administrative registers. Once selectivity in the timing of retirement is taken into account, effects on hospitalization are small, while early retirement has negative effects on survival. Our approach also allows for heterogeneous treatment effects. We show that the effects of early retirement differ according to preretirement income, with higher income individuals tending to benefit from early retirement, while the opposite is true for individuals with lower income.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2020. Vol. 49, no 1, p. 216-249
Keywords [en]
life-course analysis, matching, propensity score, retirement, register data, sequence analysis
National Category
Probability Theory and Statistics
Research subject
Statistics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-142215DOI: 10.1177/0049124117729697ISI: 000506537700008Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85062404612Local ID: 881251OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-142215DiVA, id: diva2:1160313
2017-11-262017-11-262023-03-23Bibliographically approved