Agenda

04 Nov 2026 12:15

Juan Carlos Treminio (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)

Meeting Room 1, San Giobbe Economics Campus + online

 

Juan Carlos Treminio (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) - The Effect of Workplace Automation on the Cognitive Abilities of Retirees

Abstract:

Does workplace automation leave a lasting mark on the aging mind? Two literatures, on automation's labor market effects and on the cognitive consequences of retirement, have developed largely in isolation, leaving this question unanswered. We address it using a longitudinal panel derived from SHARE, linking an externally constructed, occupation-level measure of pre-retirement automation exposure to the cognitive trajectories of 3,644 retirees in 19 European countries. Cognitive outcomes are measured as the standardised change relative to each individual's last pre-retirement assessment. A one standard deviation increase in automation exposure accelerates post-retirement decline by 0.105 standard deviations in immediate recall and 0.080 in delayed recall, with smaller but significant effects on verbal fluency and numeracy. Automation does not predict comparable cognitive change before retirement. The memory effects are robust to controls for job complexity and physical demands, to selection into retirement, to unobserved individual heterogeneity and to selection on unobservables. The effect holds across occupations and education levels, with suggestive evidence of larger effects among manual and less-educated workers. The cognitive consequences of automation extend beyond the labor market and into retirement.

 

The seminar can be attended also remotely, connecting to ZOOM.

Link Zoom: bit.ly/insem-2425
ID riunione:  880 2639 9452
Passcode: InSem-2425

Language

The event will be held in English

Organized by

Department of Economics (InSeminars)

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