Retirement from full time employment is associated with both physical and mental health effects. From the perspective of Unites States public policy, measuring the health effects associated with retirement is important for evaluating policies which increase the minimum age for retirement, given concern over financing entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare.  This paper estimates the effect of complete retirement on several physical and mental health outcomes of older Americans (i.e. ones above 50 years of age). It further tries to examine whether there are differential effects associated with different health outcome, using 10 longitudinal waves (1992-2010) of the Health and Retirement Study. This dataset is a rich source for labor force participation, health and socio-demographic information of older Americans born during 1931-1941 and their spouses.  Of course, poor health may be both a cause and consequence of retirement. I attempt to address this issue of reverse causality using both sample stratification strategy and an alternative instrumental variable approach. The preliminary results indicate that complete retirement is associated with adverse physical and mental health outcomes.

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