Impact of Retirement on Quality of Life: Role of Changes in Social Network Involvement

Ageing populations foreground understanding how retirement affects quality of life. The inconclusive findings on retirement’s quality of life impacts encourage further analyses of this association’s complexity. Using waves 4 (2011) and 6 (2015) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (N = 9249) and conditional change multilevel mixed-effects linear regressions, this study investigates how changes in three measures of social network involvement (size of close social network, frequency of contact with one’s close social network, and emotional closeness with one’s close social network) moderate how retirement is associated with quality of life. Our findings show that increased social network involvement concurrent with entry into retirement predicts a more beneficial retirement transition. These results are interpreted through role theory. Consequently, this study encourages societal and clinical attention to retirees’ social network involvement. It also recommends further study of the nuances that affect how retirement is associated with quality of life.