Objectives: To estimate trajectories of depression around old age retirement in Swedish women and men and examine if socio-economic status predicted the trajectories Methods: The analytic sample comprised 907 women and 806 men from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health. B-spline smoothers and group-based trajectory modelling were used to identify groups of individuals with similar trajectories of depressive symptoms around retirement. Multinomial regression analyses were conducted to investigate if socio-economic factors were associated with odds of belonging to trajectory groups with higher depression scores.
Results: Four depressive symptoms trajectories were identified in both genders, all showing similar symptom levels across the retirement transition. Low levels of depressive symptoms were observed in the three largest groups. In the last trajectory group among women (2.5%) depression scores were moderate to severe and among men (3.3%) depression scores were persistent moderate. Higher educational level and lower subjectively rated social status were associated with higher odds of belonging to trajectory groups with higher levels of depressive symptoms in both genders.
Conclusion: Retirement transition was not associated with symptoms of depression. Higher educational level and lower subjective social status may predict higher depressive symptom levels the years around old age retirement.
Keywords: Old age retirement; depression; group based trajectory modelling; smoothing; socio-economic status.