To cut through the suspense the answer is yes. If you look at two individuals of the same age, the person who retired early will show greater cognitive decline than the person who retired later. However, there are a couple things one can do to help partially offset the decline (that don’t involve returning to work), and this finding does not mean early retirement causes dementia. First, a little background.
It has been known for many years that our ability to remember things and process information-called our fluid mental abilities-gets worse as we age. While there is some evidence that certain Nootropic supplements may help prevent this decrease in cognitive decline, age will inevitably impact a person’s mental agility. The drop-off is typically mild for years, but then usually accelerates sometime in our seventies. Since the decline occurs in years associated with retirement, there have been some researchers suggesting that the act of retirement causes the decline, but others say no, it is simply an age-related coincidence. A recent study by Celidoni, Dal Bianco and Weber separated out the other variables to focus solely on how mental function was affected by the time spent in retirement. Their chief finding was that the number of years spent in retirement increased the decline in fluid mental abilities. In other words, if you looked at two 75-year-old individuals who were identical, with the difference being one had retired at age 62 and the other at age 69, the individual who had retired at age 62 would be worse at remembering things and processing information.
As life expectancy has increased, the issue of age-related mental decline leading to dementia has become more prominent. The Plassman studies (2007, 2008) found that while few people in their sixties suffered from cognitive impairment, more than half of people in their eighties are impaired. This knowledge has resulted in increased anxiety over protecting our own mental prowess and resulted in the appearance of many pop-psych books and self-anointed cognitive gurus claiming one can stop mental decline by eating or not eating certain foods, taking particular pills, and doing certain brain exercises. Sadly, almost none of this has been proven to work.
This new study did reinforce the notion that engaging in regular physical activity appears to slow down the decline. Indeed, engaging in any regular ongoing daily activities worked to maintain cognitive abilities. However, even these activities did not fully offset the negative effects of early retirement. The study indicated-but couldn’t prove-that retirement lifestyle is a factor. Those who led low stress retirement lives seemed to have lower rates of decline.
The big takeaway from the study is don’t retire-at least not early-if you want to maximize retention of your mental power. The others are to exercise regularly and create a daily routine of doing things so you’re not simply watching television all day. A final point is don’t get too hung up on all of this. Your fluid intelligence has been declining for decades, but during this time you’ve been gaining knowledge, also called crystallized intelligence. What this means is that while it may take you longer to process data, and you may need to make more notes to yourself so you don’t forget, you can still make good decisions and enjoy life regardless of your age.
References:
Martina Celidoni, M.C. Dal Bianco and G. Weber. (2013). Early retirement and cognitive decline.
A longitudinal analysis using SHARE data. Marco Fanno. WP N174
Plassman et al. (2008). Prevalence of cognitive impairment without dementia in the United States. Annals of Internal Medicine. 148, 6: 427-434
Plassman et al. (2007). Prevalence of dementia in the United States: The Aging, Demographics, and Memory Study. Neuroepidemiology. 29: 125-132
