Early retirement does not lead to longer life: Study

Early retirement does not lead to longer life: Study

Planning for an early retirement??? Think again. A research published in the British Medical Journal contradicts the generally believed theory that people who retire at an early age are likely to live longer. In fact, it will possibly shorten your life, says the study.

Shan Tsai, belonging to the Shell Health Services in Houston, observed the lifestyles of 3,500 retired employees at Royal Dutch Shell Plc between January 1973 and December 2003. He concluded that those who give up working at the age of 55 are more prone to have a shorter life span in comparison with the ones who retired at the age of 65.

More Info

It is commonly assumed that retiring early helps you live longer as you lead a rather comfortable, tension-free lifestyle minus the extreme pressures of work. However, the Shell Health Services research findings totally oppose this popular belief.

Tsai and his mates at Shell made a comparative study among workers who retired aged 55, 60 and 65, scrutinizing 26 years of their lives to judge as to what effect early retirement has on an employee. The study took into consideration crucial factors like the effects of sex, socio-economic status and calendar year of the study, but could not credit the findings to any of these aspects.

However, Tsai did feel that the inferior health of those retiring early might be responsible in some way for the increased death rates in this category. The study discovered that quite a few employees bid farewell to their jobs at 55 because of ill-health but that in now way contributed to them leading a longer life. In contrast, he did find that a person's mortality was better if he retired late.

Statistics say that death rate was seen to be nearly double in the category of people retiring at 55- the deaths took place specifically within 10 years of their retirement- as compared to the ones who left work at 65. After turning 65, these employees who retired early face 37 percent greater danger of death compared to the ones who retired at 65. Between 60 and 65, however, the mortality didn't vary much.

Some other researchers have also opined that taking permanent leave from work at a slightly early age can be dangerous to the health of the employees as they are either already ill prior to retirement or they fall sick due to their totally changed lifestyle.