“The studies I have seen tend to show that there are health benefits to working longer.”
As the economists Axel Börsch-Supan and Morten Schuth of the Munich Center for the Economics of Aging of the Max Planck Institute for Social Law
and Social Policy put it in an article for the National Bureau of Economic Research, “Even disliked colleagues and a bad boss, we argue, are better than social isolation because they provide cognitive challenges that keep the mind active and healthy.”
Other studies have examined the impact of work and employment on the richness of social networks and social connectedness.
“But after that, we see more of a ‘use it or lose it’ effect.”
If the engagement and connections from a job — as well as the income — can contribute to a healthier older population, the implication is
that policy makers should make it easier for older workers to engage in paid work.
Activation of the brain and activation of social networks may be critical,” Nicole Maestas, an
associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, said in an interview.
“Volunteering and paid work produces better physical
and mental health,” said Linda Fried, a founder of the Experience Corps who is also dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
His database — drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe over various years — found
that there was no short-term impact of retirement on mental health, as defined as a range of depressive tendencies (such as appetite, concentration, fatigue and so on) to clinical depression.
The survey results, Mr. Heller-Sahlgren said, suggest
that the negative effects of retirement start to appear after the first few years of ceasing to work.