Study: Working Past Retirement Age Leads To Longer Life

You might just want to put your retirement behind after reading this.

A recent study conducted by the researchers at the Oregon State University found out that those who work past their retirement age lead to longer life, while those who retire early maybe at risk of dying early.

By conducting a population-based longitudinal study among 2956 older adults in USA, the researchers found that both healthy and unhealthy adults who retire past age 65 had a lower risk of death that those who retired before they turned 65.

Among healthy retirees, a 1-year older age at retirement was associated with an 11% lower risk of all-cause mortality. Similarly, unhealthy retirees had a lower all-cause mortality risk when retiring later," the paper published in Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health reads.

What makes the study even more remarkable is that none of the sociodemographic factors such as lifestyle and health issues were found to modify the association.

"The healthy group is generally more advantaged in terms of education, wealth, health behaviors and lifestyle, but taking all of those issues into account, the pattern still remained," Associate Professor Robert Stawski, senior author of the paper said in a release published in Oregon State University news page.

However, Chenkai Wu, the lead author of the study said "It may not apply to everybody, but we think work brings people a lot of economic and social benefits that could impact the length of their lives."

Stress.org currently ranks retirement as 10th on the list of most stressful events in people's lives.

In 2012, a study conducted by researchers of Harvard School of Public Health looked at rates of heart attack and stroke among 5,422 individuals and found out that those who had retired were 40 percent more likely to have had a heart attack or stroke than those who were still working.

Freakonomics' Stephen Dubner also noted that early retirement actually has a considerable downside. 
Talking to Marketplace.org, he said that for every extra year of early retirement, you lose about two months of life expectancy.

"A lot of them cardiovascular, likely due to things like more smoking and drinking, worse diet, not enough exercise. But there's also evidence to show it goes beyond the physical, that working longer is tied to better mental health as well," he added.