To further illustrate how socio-demographic and personal characteristics or conversion factors translate income into overall wellbeing, two respondents’ case studies are presented and discussed below. Both cases illustrate how different socio-cultural and lived experiences of respondents affect their ability to translate their incomes into overall wellbeing. These are derived from qualitative face-to-face interviews data from phase 2 of the study.
7.5.1 Case study 1
Tei Armah (high income) lives with his wife and an adult working daughter in a middle class residential suburb of Accra. He has two other adult children who live and work abroad. Apart from his pension income, he earns interest on his investments each month. He has no financial obligations towards his children because they are all financially independent. Rather, he earns enough money to provide for the needs of his household of three members, and also regularly supports his mother and sister financially without any difficulty. He is able to have leisure with friends or travel around the country whenever he feels the need to experience a new environment. He feels very satisfied with his life because he planned well towards retirement by ensuring he had enough investments to support his wellbeing in retirement and also ensured that he had no debts at the time of retirement, which freed resources for him to invest more even in retirement. He has multiple access to healthcare services, is able to eat any food that he deems suitable for his health, and contributes to the needs of his extended family when required to do so. He is able to leverage his long working experience in the banking sector in Ghana to determine appropriate investments to make.
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Even though Tei Armah has a small household, all members of his household also earn income. He has a few members of his family depending on him financially, apart from the money he provides for the general upkeep of the house whenever needed. His financial obligations to the extended family is not extensive and therefore his income is freed to finance his wellbeing. His options are widened because he can afford to do the things he needs to do to maintain a decent level of wellbeing. He does not feel constrained by retirement or by his financial situation. Rather, he is enabled to apply his retirement income to his wellbeing because compared to others, he has few dependants, smaller household, other members of his household also earn income and are financially independent. He has many years of work experience in banking and finance to aid his investment decisions, and has few children, who were adults and working at the time of retirement. These factors and circumstances of his life make sufficient money available to him each month with which he is able to adequately meet his desired wellbeing.
7.5.2 Case study 2
Emmanuel Akoto (high income) lives with his wife, an adult daughter, and two grandchildren in a low class suburb of Accra. According to him, most of his resources were used to educate his five children to the tertiary level. At the time of retirement, two of his children were still in school and one was unemployed. He is the main breadwinner for his household of five persons, and also gives financial support to his extended family and that of his wife, which is a drain on his financial resources. He was not able to build or buy a house prior to retirement because he invested most of his money in the education of his children, with the expectation that they would become successful adults and in turn support him in retirement. Unfortunately, that had not materialized at the time of this study because his children were not financially independent. Indeed, he takes care of two of his grandchildren who live with him, together with their mother. Two other of his children, are not working and therefore rely on him financially. He is compelled to work in his retirement to supplement his pension income.
Even though he enjoys free healthcare at the hospital where he does part-time work and is also enrolled on the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), he finds it challenging whenever he has to make out-of-pocket payment for prescribed drugs that are expensive. He does not receive any support in cash or kind from his children. As the Ebusua Penyin of his extended family, he often travels to his hometown to deal with family issues. This situation is a drain on his limited financial resources. He owns a plot of land and plans to build his own house but he does not save money towards it because his income does not meet all the financial demands on
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him. He does not feel financially secure, even though he earns income from his part-time work in addition to his pension income. His greatest challenge in retirement is his inability to own a house and the inadequacy of his income.
Emmanuel Akoto’s ability to attain his desired wellbeing is influenced by the socio-cultural context of his life in retirement. His skill level as a professional (psychiatry nurse) allows him to work on a part-time basis in order to earn additional income, but the fact that he continues to provide financial support to his children, grandchildren, as well as his extended family and that of his wife, moderates his ability to translate his retirement income into overall wellbeing.
In the two case studies presented above, both retirees are professionals, retired as senior officers in their respective organizations, and receive a pension that is above the average pension of the study sample. However, case study 1 has fewer dependants, lives in his own house, and does not do any part-time work in retirement but earns regular interest on his investments. All his children are working and living independently, and he generally feels satisfied with his life in retirement. On the other hand, case study 2 has more dependants, does not own a house and so lives in a rented house, has children who still depend on him financially, engages in part-time work to earn extra income, and generally does not feel satisfied with his life in retirement.
While case study 1 illustrates a retiree whose socio-demographic and personal characteristics promote rather than limit his ability to translate his retirement income into wellbeing, case study 2 illustrates a retiree whose socio-demographic and personal characteristics limits his ability to translate his retirement income into wellbeing. If wellbeing in retirement is an outcome of life-course events, as suggested by Halleröd et al. (2013), then the socio- demographic and personal characteristics of respondents, which are largely related to their lived experiences, have influenced their experience of wellbeing in retirement.
7.6 Conclusion
This chapter addresses two research questions. The first question asks which of the two sets of factors (financial and non-financial) contributes most to the overall wellbeing of respondents. The second inquires into the role of socio-demographic and personal characteristics or conversion factors in the translation of income into overall wellbeing. Quantitative and qualitative data were used to address these questions to provide better appreciation of the
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contribution of income and socio-demographic and personal characteristics to the overall wellbeing of respondents.
In their rendition of Sen’s notion of capability and functioning, Gough et al. (2007) emphasize that people’s ability to achieve their desired functioning is shaped by the resources available to them, which are both financial and non-financial. The chapter highlights the contributions of each set of factors to wellbeing and also the interplay of the two sets of factors in the process. This is significant because previous studies on elderly wellbeing have not focused on the multiplicity of factors and their interplay. It seems however that, optimizing the translation of income into wellbeing in retirement requires a fair balance of non-financial factors, such that those that negatively affect wellbeing are reduced and those that enhance wellbeing expanded. This is in line with the idea of wellbeing equilibrium of Headey and Wearing (1992) discussed in Chapter Two.
The analysis in this chapter largely confirms the importance of having income in retirement, whether from pension or other income sources. It also echoes the inadequacy of pension income, for which reason some respondents have to rely on other sources of income. It is obvious from the findings of this study that not all respondents have other income besides pension income. It is important to re-examine existing pension policy and its implementation to ensure that retirees under the SSNIT pension scheme enjoy the full set of benefits under the scheme, i.e. an adequate monthly pension, and an adequate lump sum payment from the second and third tiers under the current pension law. In this way, workers who retire will have the benefit of investing their monies for returns in the form of interest to supplement their pension income.
Another dimension of the analysis is the set of factors that together influence overall wellbeing of respondents. According to Sen (1993), it is the capabilities set of individuals that provides the ‘positive freedoms’ needed to do, to be, and to achieve what is perceived to be needful for their wellbeing. If the focus of the capabilities approach is the expansion of human capabilities, the findings in the chapter demonstrate which capabilities should be expanded and the effect to be expected on overall wellbeing of respondents. The expansion of capabilities means mitigating the conditions that reduce wellbeing, while improving those that enhance wellbeing. To this end, the findings in this chapter are relevant for policy.
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Chapter Eight: Synthesizing key findings, conclusion and policy implications
8.1 Introduction
Research interest in the elderly population in Ghana has been on-going since the 1980s with scholars like Nana Araba Apt, Charles K. Brown, Osei Darkwah, and Michael W. Kpessah spearheading the process from different theoretical and policy angles. The present study joins the discourse with specific interest in the wellbeing of retirees under the SSNIT pension scheme, focusing on the contribution of retirement income to wellbeing. The application of the notion of capabilities and functionings in Sen’s capability approach brings a new dimension to the discourse because of its potential to allow a multi-dimensional view of wellbeing. This chapter synthesizes the findings of the study by connecting the three key research questions and the findings thereof. The key findings are dialogued with previous studies and common grounds and deviations noted. On the basis of the conceptual framework that guided this study and the mixed methodology employed, a multi-dimensional mixed methods capability model for understanding wellbeing in retirement is proposed as a contribution to the ongoing discourse on the application of the capability approach in social scientific research. This is followed by a discussion of the policy implications of the study, and a conclusion that highlights key lessons and research/policy gaps thrown up by this study. Like any other social scientific research, this research is not devoid of limitations. Hence, some limitations of the study are discussed, followed by the contribution this study makes to knowledge.