“The studies I have seen tend to show that there are health benefits to working longer.”<br />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<br />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.”<br />Other studies have examined the impact of work and employment on the richness of social networks and social connectedness.<br />“But after that, we see more of a ‘use it or lose it’ effect.”<br />If the engagement and connections from a job — as well as the income — can contribute to a healthier older population, the implication is<br />that policy makers should make it easier for older workers to engage in paid work.<br />Activation of the brain and activation of social networks may be critical,” Nicole Maestas, an<br />associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, said in an interview.<br />“Volunteering and paid work produces better physical<br />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.<br />His database — drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe over various years — found<br />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.<br />The survey results, Mr. Heller-Sahlgren said, suggest<br />that the negative effects of retirement start to appear after the first few years of ceasing to work.
