Retirement adjustment in the pandemic – did risk- and protective factors change?

The exit from the workforce and the transition to retirement often coincides with changes in important aspects of individuals’ daily life and social roles. This can be a demanding experience for some retirees, affecting their mental health. It is thus important to identify relevant psychosocial, health, and financial predictors of adjustment quality. Retiring during the Covid-19 pandemic may have been particularly challenging, as newly retired older adults had fewer opportunities to establish new leisure activities and social relationships due to limits on in-person meeting and travel. In the present study, we compared retirees who retired in or just before the first phase of the pandemic (2019-early 2021, n = 175) with those who retired long before the pandemic (2015-2017, n = 211) in terms of their retirement adjustment quality (reported in late 2020 / early 2021 or 2017, respectively). Retirement adjustment quality was measured by perceived adjustment difficulty and change in life satisfaction across the transition. We further investigated whether pre-retirement social activity, generalized self-efficacy, online activities or disease load were associated with later retirement adjustment in both groups. We found that groups did not differ in their retirement adjustment. In both groups, a higher generalized self-efficacy was associated with better adjustment. Social activities before retirement were only associated with increases in life satisfaction among those retiring before the pandemic. We discuss our findings with respect to the literature on predictors of retirement adjustment, as well as on the effects of the pandemic on psychosocial functioning.