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Health Matters
Work may hold one key to a longer life
By TARA PARKER-POPE Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 28, 2004; Page R6
The decisions you make now about your career and retirement won't
just affect your lifestyle as you age -- they could very likely
affect your long-term health.
In recent years, medical researchers have found numerous links
between health and career issues and the impact they can have on
workers and their families. Studies have shown that unhappiness and
stress in the workplace contribute to weight gain, antidepressant
use and even how quickly a person recovers from back pain. Getting
laid off even increases the chance that a child at home will try
smoking.
Given this inextricable link between our work health and our
personal health, it's no wonder that the decisions we make about
retirement -- what is essentially our final career move -- could
have significant implications for our health and longevity.While
it's long been theorized that those who stay busy in their older
years have better health, there has been little research to back it
up. And it's never been clear whether older workers fared better
because they were still working, or whether they were still working
simply because they were healthier to start with.
But a long-term study of 1,000 men and women born in 1920 is
shedding more light on just how much impact work and retirement can
have on longevity. The participants all joined the study at the age
of 70 and have been followed for the past 14 years by geriatrics
researchers from the Hadassah Hospital Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem.
After crunching the data at the six-year and 12-year marks, and
controlling for individuals' health at the beginning of the study,
among other factors, the researchers found that it was work --
whether a person kept working or retired -- that emerged as a major
determinant in whether a person was still alive. Among the 1,000
people studied, those who continued to work at the age of 70 and
beyond were 2.5 times as likely to be alive at the age of 82 as
those who had retired and weren't working at the beginning of the
study.
Chasing the Wrong Dream?
It isn't clear from the data how long a person needs to continue
working beyond the regular retirement age to reap the benefits to
longevity, but it appears that the longer you continue working, the
better.
"We are more confident today that if you continue working and
postpone your retirement as much as possible, you will be better
off," says Yoram Maaravi, lead researcher and a senior physician at
the Jerusalem hospital conducting the study. "But the majority of
people around the world are waiting for retirement -- they are
dreaming about retirement. It's only the minority who hope to keep
on working."
While the Israeli study showed the protective benefits of work on
older people, losing a job at an older age can be particularly
devastating. In another study, Yale researchers followed 4,220
workers, aged 51 to 61, for six years, during which time 457 workers
lost their jobs. The study, published in May in the American Journal
of Industrial Medicine, showed that people who are laid off very
close to retirement age are nearly three times as likely to suffer a
stroke.
Losing a job is stressful at any age, but it can be particularly
tough near retirement. Part of the reason may be that older workers
have more medical concerns than younger workers, and they often are
less likely to find a new job than a younger co-worker. "When they
do, these positions commonly offer lower wages, and in some cases
diminished occupational status, loss of seniority and reduced health
and pension benefits," says William T. Gallo, associate research
scientist and lead author of the Yale study.
The recent study wasn't big enough to factor in the effects of
getting a new job after being laid off. But an earlier study by the
same scientists showed that finding a new job did, on average,
protect a worker from further declines in physical health as well as
depression.
But for those workers who find themselves miserable in their jobs
and can't wait to retire, the Israeli study did offer some hope. It
appears that the same level of protection offered by paid work also
can be obtained by doing unpaid work -- essentially, extensive
volunteering that amounts to a regular job. The study found that
busy volunteer workers were also more likely to be alive than their
fully retired counterparts.
Whether full-time work or volunteering offered more protection than
part-time efforts isn't known. But the researchers did control for
numerous variables that can affect work and health, such as the
person's health at the beginning of the study, how much they earned
in their jobs, depression and even loneliness. As a result, the data
showed that the benefits of working on either a paid or volunteer
basis were due to something other than simply keeping busy, higher
economic status or regular interaction with friends or family.
A Need for Meaning
"I think it's more profound, having to do with satisfaction in life,
meaning to life," says Dr. Maaravi. "It sounds like something you
can't control, but I think you can control it. If you like working,
try to keep working. If you don't like your job, try to find
something that is meaningful that keeps you active."
While many retirees find meaning and purpose in helping to care for
grandchildren, additional research shows that may not be the
healthiest way to spend the retirement years. In the U.S., about one
in six grandparents have cared for a grandchild for at least six
months or more.
A continuing study of more than 54,000 nurses showed that retired
nurses who cared for grandchildren at least nine hours a week had a
55% increased risk for heart attack, according to the November issue
of the American Journal of Public Health. While caring for
grandchildren can be rewarding, it can also be stressful, noted the
researchers, from Havard School of Public Health in Boston. They
speculated that the nurses spent so much time caring for
grandchildren that they had less time to exercise, get adequate
sleep and generally take care of themselves.
But notably, it was work that again appeared to offer some
protection. Nurses who cared for grandchildren but also continued
working had a 30% lower risk for heart attack than non-working
caregivers.
Given the apparent protective benefits of work on our health, Dr.
Maaravi says, it may be worth rethinking your retirement goals. If
you have a job you enjoy, don't retire simply because everybody else
is doing it. If you don't like your job, consider switching to a
career that brings you more satisfaction, so you can continue
working for many more years. If changing jobs isn't an option, then
start making plans for meaningful work -- either paid or unpaid --
once you retire.
"I tell people, 'You invest your savings into this and that, but
there is something else you can do that is a big investment in your
health,'" says Dr. Maaravi. "If you put the effort into finding work
that is meaningful, you are gaining life."
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