Simultaneous employment and depressive symptom trajectories around retirement age in Chile

Abstract

Objectives: Over the last decade, an increasing number of empirical studies have examined long-term patterns of depression among adults around retirement age and identified employment status as a crucial determinant. However, most research has examined associations between cross-sectional measures of employment and prospective depression patterns, overlooking the changing nature of employment statuses, particularly close to retirement age. Furthermore, most knowledge in this field comes from studies conducted in developed countries in Western Europe and North America. To address these gaps, this study examined simultaneous trajectories in the employment and depressive symptom domains among two age groups of Chileans before and after the standard retirement age.

Method: Using population-representative data and longitudinal statistical methods, we identified different trajectory types among two age groups (one aged 56–65 and another aged 66–75, at baseline) and characterized them according to social and health characteristics.

Results: We found that trajectories defined by permanent employment were accompanied by lower depressive symptoms than trajectories indicating either retirement or inactivity. However, trajectories combining employment and the absence of depressive symptoms were primarily followed by individuals with advantaged health and social statuses at the baseline.

Conclusion: Public policies aimed at promoting the mental health of older adults through their labor market integration risk forcing individuals who have accumulated social and health disadvantages across the life course to work longer.

Keywords:

• Depressive symptom trajectory
• employment trajectory
• sequence analysis
• Chile

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 By “older adults” we understand people aged over 65, while by “old age” the life stage that begin with the transition to older adulthood. In this study we focus on two groups of adults: one aged 56–65 at the baseline and another aged 66–75 at the baseline.

2 Although the legal retirement age is 60 for women and 65 for men, most people retire around age 65 because of Chile’s flexible retirement scheme, and the fact that 65 is the age at which both women and men with insufficient pension savings can access noncontributory pensions from the state (Baumann & Madero-Cabib, 2021).

3 Supplementary Figure 1 shows the distribution of sociodemographic variables across observations with and without missing values before the imputation process. No significant differences were observed.

4 Respondents were asked about the following depressive symptoms: (1) little interest or pleasure in doing things; (2) feeling down, depressed, or hopeless; (3) trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much; (4) feeling tired or having little energy; (5) poor appetite or overeating; (6) trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television; (7) feeling bad about yourself, or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down; (8) moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed; and (9) thoughts that you would be better off dead, or of hurting yourself in some way.

5 All variables were measured at wave 1, except diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems, and cancer(measured at wave 2 because the respondents were not asked about them at wave 1).

Additional information

Funding

This research has been supported by the following grants of the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID), Chile: -FONDECYT/INICIACION/N°11180360 -FONDAP/Nº15130009 -Millennium Science Initiative/Grant NCS17_062 (Millennium Nucleus for the Study of the Life Course and Vulnerability, MLIV)