The Association between Social Support and Purpose in Life: Focusing on Retirement Status

Background and purpose: Despite a growing research linking a sense of purpose in life with health and mortality in old age, little is known about factors and mechanism for differences in later-year sense of life purpose. This study aims to contribute to the research on a sense of life purpose among older adults by focusing on social support and retirement. Social support is known as a strong predictor of successful adaptation at an individual level (i.e. health and well-being outcomes) and societal level (i.e. productive and civic engagement). Also, recent studies suggest that social support is associated with a sense of purpose in later life. Retirement is a major transitional life change. Therefore, patterns and nature of social support may be different among those retired and those still working. To date, no known study investigated the relationship among social support, retirement, and a sense of life purpose among older adults. We had three specific aims:1) empirically identify patterns of social support 2) examine to what extent social support groups vary by the retirement status 3) investigate to what extent role of social support on a sense of purpose in life and how the association varies by the retirement status.

 Method: Data from the 2014 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) was used. The sample was restricted to those who were working (N=1,402) and retired (N=2,467). Latent class analysis was used to identify social support types based on their positive and negative social relationships including relationships with spouse/partner, children, family, and friends. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze the relationship between the social support groups and purpose in life of by the retirement status.

 Results: We found six clusters of social support: (1) High negative support from children, (2) Low positive support from friends, (3) Moderate positive support, (4) High negative support, (5) High positive support, (6) High negative support from family. Compared to those working, those retired were likely to have a lower level of health and education. Also, the proportion of having high positive support was significantly larger among the retired (56.21%) compared to those working (44.72%).  Findings from the multiple regression showed the association between social support and a sense of purpose in life varies by the retirement status. Among those working, having moderate positive support (Coef=0.21, p=0.04), high positive support (Coef=0.47, p=0.00) and high negative support from family (Coef= 0.23, p=0.00) were all significantly associated with a higher sense of purpose in life. Interestingly, among the retired, having high positive support (Coef=0.40, p=0.00) was the only significantly related group with a higher sense of purpose.

Conclusion: This study adds to the extremely limited literature on the comprehensive association among social support, sense of purpose in life and retirement. Our finding suggested positive social support could be a crucial factor in promoting a sense of purpose in life among the retired. As such, our finding serves as an important initial background knowledge for future research efforts to develop social support interventions for retirees to support of successful aging.