Gender Disparities in Life Satisfaction After Retirement: The Roles of Leisure, Family, and Finances

Toni Calasanti · Dawn Celeste Carr · Patricia Homan · Victoria Coan

40 citations0/0 files storedThe Gerontologist

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Retirement, Disability, and Employment Financial Literacy, Pension, Retirement Analysis Aging and Gerontology Research

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Recent research on life satisfaction in retirement explores gender differences but yields inconsistent patterns and does not consider gendered sources of satisfaction. We use a gender relations framework to examine whether women and men experience different changes in life satisfaction with retirement, and whether observed differences are a consequence of different assessments of the leisure, family, and financial situations that characterize their post-retirement lives. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: We use longitudinal data drawn from men and women in the Health and Retirement Study who transitioned into retirement between ages 62 and 72 for the first time between 2008 and 2016 (N = 593). We employ ordinary least squares regression and mediation tests to assess gender differences in overall and domain-specific life satisfaction (i.e., leisure, family, finances). RESULTS: Men reported increased life satisfaction following retirement, but women did not. No gender differences related to leisure or family life post-retirement emerged. Gender was associated with post-retirement satisfaction with finances (p < .001), with men reporting higher financial satisfaction. Mediation models confirmed a gender disparity in overall life satisfaction mediated by satisfaction with finances post-retirement (p < .01), explaining approximately one-third of the disparity. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: This study shows men derive greater improvements in life satisfaction in association with retirement than do women, and some of this disparity relates to women's lower satisfaction with their finances. These findings should caution policy-makers from assuming how women's increased labor force participation influences financial security in retirement, and encourage scholars to consider how gender influences subjective assessments of later life.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 40 citations exist upstream.

References

1985The Satisfaction With Life Scale 2016Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences 1995DOING DIFFERENCE 2008Framed Before We Know It 2007Profiling retirees in the retirement transition and adjustment process: Examining the longitudinal change patterns of retirees' psychological well-being.2011Retirement adjustment: A review of theoretical and empirical advancements.2013Psychological Research on Retirement 2020Progress toward gender equality in the United States has slowed or stalled

Cited by

2021Do psychological social and financial perceptions of post-retirement life and demography influence the retirement planning behaviour?2022Changes in life satisfaction during the transition to retirement: findings from the FIREA cohort study 2024Mobilities and leisure in later ages: The role of religious tourism in the lives of low-income older women in India

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.