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the research, published in the journal ssm population health , said this protective benefit — which was consistent regardless of gender, education level or occupational attainment — helps guard against alzheimer’s disease and other age-related impairments. because the accumulation of risk factors over the course of a lifetime has an effect on both cognition and the age at which a person retires, the relationship between the two has proven difficult to quantify in the past.
“in this study, we approach retirement and cognitive function from the perspective that they both come near the end of a long path of life,” said angelo lorenti , one of the authors of the study and a researcher with the max planck institute for demographic research (mpidr) in rostock, germany. “it begins with one’s social origins in ethnicity, gender and early-life social and economic status, goes on with educational and occupational attainment and health behaviours and goes all the way up to more proximate factors such as partnership status and mental and physical health.
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the study relied on extensive health data from more than 20,000 americans between the ages of 55 and 75 who participated in the health and retirement study. it had three hypotheses: that putting off retirement until the age of 67 is more protective of cognitive decline than retiring between the ages of 55 and 66; that this is more protective for men than women, for those with higher levels of education and for those with professional occupations; and that depressive symptoms and comorbidities mediate the protective effect of postponing retirement on later-life cognitive function.
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dave yasvinski is a writer with healthing.ca
