TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Xue, Xindong
AU  - Ye, Chunchen
AU  - Rocco, Lorenzo
        TI  - Retirement and Social Capital: Evidence from Urban China
        PY  - 2026/Jul/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18822
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18822
        AB  - We study the effect of retirement on social capital in urban China. Using three waves of the China Family Panel Studies (2018–2022) and a fuzzy regression discontinuity design based on China’s statutory retirement ages, we document that retirement does not raise or lower social capital uniformly but reallocates it. Retirement causes bridging social capital to fall and bonding social capital to rise. The reallocation is concentrated among men, whose pre-retirement networks are more heavily workplace-centered. As governments around the world postpone statutory retirement ages in response to population ageing, our estimates imply that pension reforms carry social externalities of opposing sign that fiscal accounting omits.
        KW  - retirement
KW  - social capital
KW  - fuzzy regression discontinuity
KW  - bridging and bonding social capital
        ER  -