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0 points0xy6h ago0 comments

There's a massive spike in mortality for those who retire from work versus those who keep working. In fact, working just a single year after you're 65 is associated with 11% lower risk of death for healthy people and 9% for unhealthy.

Working is objectively good for your health. Stopping work is associated with an extremely large increase in mortality risk, for both healthy and unhealthy people.

Any alternatives must weigh the resulting death it will cause.

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marginalia_nu6h ago

How are we sure about the direction of cause and effect here? I'd expect more healthier people to self-select the working cohort, all else being equal.

asdff4h ago

In practice it doesn't really work that way. It isn't like "I am ill bodied, I ought to retire." It is more like "I am ill bodied, but I can't afford to retire, so I must work in some capacity." People who retire early are probably far more likely to be wealthier, and that is correlated with healthspan.

marginalia_nu4h ago

It's hard to prove or falsify this statement.

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amanaplanacanal5h ago

Yeah this seems like an obvious confounder.

pessimizer6h ago

Did any of that signal come from people who hadn't spent the last 40 or 50 years working, in a society constructed around working?

If I had a study that showed increased mortality in people who had owned a parrot for 50 years in the year after that parrot died, you wouldn't cite it as evidence of the basic human need for a parrot.

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