PHYSICAL HEALTH IN RETIREMENT: A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN CIVIL SERVANT AND NON-CIVIL SERVANT RETIREES IN IBADAN METROPOLIS, OYO STATE, NIGERIA.

Abstract

                                                                                                                                  The study is a comparative study that examines physical health in retirement between civil servant and non-civil servant retirees in Ibadan, Oyo state Nigeria. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. Three hundred and eighty-four 384) retirees were selected through a simple random sampling technique. A self-structured and validated questionnaire with a reliability co-efficient value of 0.89 was used for data collection. Three research hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance using Chi-square and independent t-test. Findings from the study revealed that there was a significant influence of retirees’ status on their physical health (P<0.05), there was a significant difference in care dependency of civil servant and non-civil servant retirees (t-cal 4.381; P<0.05). However, the status that there was no significant difference in impairment of civil servant retirees and non-civil servant retirees (t-cal .009; P>0.05). Based on these findings, it was recommended that government should provide free healthcare services to people aged 65 years and above. Social workers should educate the public and create awareness about pension reforms particularly the micro pension plan for those working in the informal sector such as self-employed and private employers on the inherent benefits of the new Contributory Pension Scheme.