Emotional Abuse Between Couples After Retirement: The Role of Economic Power Imbalance

Speakers: Prof KK Tang & Dr Elcin Tuzel

Affiliation: The University of Queensland

Location: Level 6 Boardroom (629), Colin Clark Building (#39), St Lucia Campus

Zoom: https://uqz.zoom.us/j/82603079317

Abstract: South Korea’s rapid population ageing and rising female economic autonomy have heightened the need to understand how retirement affects marital dynamics in later life. This study provides the first causal evidence on the impact of retirement on self-reported emotional abuse---the most common form of intimate partner violence among older adults---using nationally representative panel data from the Korea Welfare Panel Study. We exploit cohort-specific statutory pension eligibility ages as an exogenous determinant of retirement and estimate two-stage least squares models supported by event-study analyses. Our results show that retirement reduces emotional abuse, but only when the higher-income spouse retires. Retirement by the lower-income spouse has no detectable effect. Once spouses are classified by pre-retirement income shares, all gender differences in retirement effects disappear, indicating that economic power imbalance---not gender---is the key element linking retirement to psychological maltreatment. A surprising finding is that higher-income spouses report being emotionally abused as frequently as lower-income spouses, and the retirement of the higher-income spouse reduces the emotional abuse reported by both spouses, not just by the lower-income spouse. By focusing on emotional rather than physical abuse, the study broadens the scope of retirement research. It highlights how economic power imbalance shapes the quality of spousal relationships in ageing, patriarchal societies.