Work, even though it has always been necessary for the continued progression and survival of our species, has become quite a bother. Ever since we’ve stopped working just for survival and started having a monetary system in place, people started getting reasons to hate their jobs.

And of course, why wouldn’t they? If it’s up to someone else to compensate you for the work you do and if you consider you deserve more money, you’ve already got yourself a difference of opinion. Add to that the fact that you are constantly told what to do, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for disaster.

Dreaming of retirement

So it’s no surprise to anybody that people can’t wait to retire. Many times, even young people that have been working their jobs just long enough for them to become tedious happen to dream of retirement, perhaps even just to fantasize about a time when they don’t have to wake up as early as they have to.

But that might not be such a good idea, apparently. According to a very long and complex study, retiring later helps you live longer, although it may not feel like such. The study was performed as part of the very long term Healthy Retirement Study, and it was supported by the National Institute on Aging and the University of Michigan.

Retirement study

For the study, the researchers followed a sample of 2,956 people for eighteen years. So as to look at how exactly early retirement affects longevity, the participants were chosen so as to have been working in the year 1992 but to have fully retired by 2010. They were also divided into two groups.

In order to make sure that the results aren’t affected by any factors, the participants were divided into two groups based on their health state when they retired – the healthy group (contained two thirds of the participants, and they all quit for reasons unrelated to their health status) and the not healthy group (one third of the participants, they quit for health reasons).

Life expectations during retirement

More than half of the subjects chose to retire before the age of 65, a third retired at the age of 66 or older, and exactly twelve percent retired at exactly 65 years old. As it turns out, even a single year spent working extra can lead to an overall lower chance of dying from any causes – what is called an “all-cause mortality risk.”

In fact, for the healthy group, each year spent working after the age of 65 decreased the all-cause mortality risk by 11 percent, while for the participants in the not healthy group that worked until they were 72 lowered their mortality by 48 percent (as compared to 56 percent for the healthy group).

Image source: Flickr