,the study found that most of the cardiovascular events happened in the year after retirement. When I contacted the lead researcher of the study, J Robin Moon, a sociologist now working on health systems in the Bronx, a poor borough of New York City, she said her statistical analysis might reflect “reverse causality”: in other words, people may have been forced to retire because they already had cardiovascular disease, not the other way around.
Those who were only semi-retired — working part-time — had substantially less risk of a heart attack. So Ms Moon ponders whether the ill-health effects have something to do with the US way of retirement, where people enter a life “that is completely different from what you’re used to with so many changes, socially and economic
In contrast, a number of in Europe have had results very different from the Harvard research. A multiyear study of the pension system in Germany found that retirement “has a positive effect on health, increasing the probability of reporting to be in satisfactory health and mental health” and even reducing the number of visits paid to the doctor.