The effect of a wife's retirement on her husband's mental health

This article examines the effect of wives’ retirement on their husband’s mental health in Australia. By exploiting the exogenous variations in women’s retirement induced by the age pension qualifying ages, we find that spousal retirement status has a positive impact on the mental health of older men. This beneficial impact is found to strengthen with wives’ time spent in retirement. We show that wife’s retirement affects the constituents of her husband’s mental well-being in different ways. We also have identified four channels for the positive linkage between older women’s retirement and the mental health of their spouse.