A Life of Leisure? Investigating the Differential Impact of Retirement on Leisure Activity

Remaining active in older adulthood is widely endorsed by governments and policy-makers as a way of promoting public health and curbing welfare spending. Despite links between greater leisure activity in older adulthood and better health, cognitive function, and subjective well-being, there is a dearth of research investigating the impact of retirement on leisure activity engagement. Therefore, the primary goal of this study is to address this knowledge gap and investigate the impact of retirement on leisure activity engagement.

Using panel data from 2 waves of a large-scale longitudinal survey of Dutch older workers (N = 4,927), we investigated the impact of retirement on hours spent engaging in physical, social, and self-development activities. We further investigated the differential impact of retirement on leisure activity in retirement based on various sociodemographic characteristics.

Although leisure activity increased across all 3 activity domains, conditional change ordinal least square regression models revealed that retirement resulted in significantly greater increases in activity relative to nonretirees. Additional analyses including interaction terms revealed that the impact of retirement on self-development and social activity differed significantly based on gender and education.

Our study demonstrates that while time in leisure activity largely increases in response to retirement the nature and magnitude of the impact of retirement on leisure activity is not uniform. From a policy perspective, findings that certain groups, namely men and lower--educated individuals, may be at greater risk of lower activity levels may help guide interventions promoting active aging and retirement.