Purpose: Increasing retirement-aged workers are encouraged to stay in the labor market, as delayed retirement initiative is proposed. This study investigates the interplay of late-life working participation and social security on the mental health risk of retirement-aged workers.
Method: We applied data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS-2018), and the instrumental variables regression was conducted.
Results: Late-life working could alleviate depression, as did the beneficiary status of employment-based social health insurance and the pensionable phase of social pension participation. Besides, the role of late-life working in alleviating depression became more salient when late retirees were not insured by the employment-based social health insurance and still in the pension contribution phase.
Conclusions: It is suggested that the current social security system in China has not been sufficiently well designed to protect the mental health of retirement-aged workers.
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