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. 2024 Jun 11;24(1):1565.
doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-18422-z.

The impact of retirement on blood pressure: evidence from a nationwide survey in China

Jiarun Mi  1 , Xueyan Han  1 , Man Cao  1 , Hanchao Cheng  1 , Zhaoyang Pan  1 , Jian Guo  2   3 , Wei Sun  1 , Yuanli Liu  1 , Congyi Zheng  4 , Xin Wang  4 , Xue Cao  4 , Zhen Hu  4 , Yixin Tian  4 , Zengwu Wang  5 , Tianjia Guan  6
Affiliations

The impact of retirement on blood pressure: evidence from a nationwide survey in China

Jiarun Mi et al. BMC Public Health. .

Abstract

Introduction: The health impact of retirement is controversial. Most previous studies have been based on self-reported health indicators or the endpoints of some chronic diseases (e.g., morbidity or mortality), but objective physiological indicators (e.g., blood pressure) have rarely been used. The objective of this study is to elucidate the health effects of retirement on blood pressure, thereby offering empirical evidence to facilitate the health of retirees and to optimize retirement policies.

Methods: From 2012 to 2015, 84,696 participants of the Chinese Hypertension Survey (CHS) were included in this study. We applied the fuzzy regression discontinuity design (FRDD) to identify retirement's causal effect on systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and pulse pressure. We also explored the heterogeneity in the effects of retirement across different sex and education level groups.

Results: Based on the fully adjusted model, we estimated that retirement increased SBP by 5.047 mm Hg (95% CI: -2.628-12.723, P value: 0.197), DBP by 0.614 mm Hg (95% CI: -3.879-5.108, P value: 0.789) and pulse pressure by 4.433 mm Hg (95% CI: -0.985-9.851, P value: 0.109). We found that retirement led to a significant increase in male participants' SBP and pulse pressure as well as a possible decrease in female participants' blood pressure. Additionally, the blood pressure levels of low-educated participants were more vulnerable to the shock of retirement.

Conclusion: Retirement is associated with an increase in blood pressure level. There is a causal relationship between the increase in blood pressure levels of men and retirement. Policy-makers should pay extra attention to the health status of men and less educated people when adjusting retirement policies in the future.

Keywords: Blood pressure; Health impact; Regression discontinuity design; Retirement.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Retirement rate by standardized age
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The FRDD estimates of the effect of retirement on health outcomes. Model 1 did not include any covariates. Model 2 adjusted for sociodemographic variables (i.e., education level and marriage status). Model 3 additionally adjusted for health behavior variables (i.e., smoking and alcohol consumption). Model 4 (i.e., full adjusted model) additionally adjusted for antihypertensive drug variables
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