Retirement and the mental health of the self-employed

Department of Management research seminar series 2025-2026

This article proposes that the behaviors and actions entailed by entrepreneurship make it likely that the self-employed will experience lower mental wellbeing after retirement – an outcome that is ameliorated by better physical health and greater education.

I test and find empirical support for these ideas using a panel of Health and Retirement Survey data; strikingly, the adverse impact of retirement on self-employed mental health persists well into retirement. If workers can anticipate worse future mental health, that might explain the puzzle why many self-employed continue to work well beyond conventional retirement ages, despite being wealthy enough to retire.

I go on to explore implications for: entrepreneurship researchers who study health and retirement; practitioners advising entrepreneurs; and policymakers grappling with challenges entailed by ageing populations.

Bio

Simon Parker is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at Ivey Business School, and co-Editor-in Chief of the Journal of Business Venturing. He obtained his PhD in Economics from Durham University, and has published in leading economics, entrepreneurship and general management journals. Dr Parker’s monograph, The Economics of Entrepreneurship (Cambridge University Press) is in its second edition.

His recent research focuses on entrepreneurship among women in developing countries; entrepreneurship and health outcomes; retirement of entrepreneurs; and entry and performance of disabled entrepreneurs. Methodologically, most of his current work utilizes field, laboratory, and natural experiments; he is also interested in Bayesian statistical methods.

Dr Parker has published 35 business case studies with Ivey Publishing, with an emphasis on entrepreneurship. He has been an advisor to the OECD on several entrepreneurship and SME public policy missions and leads executive education programs on entrepreneurial ventures and venture capital at Ivey.