If you’ve been waiting for years to retire, you might not want to be told that working after retirement is good for you. However, that is exactly what is suggested by new research from the US.

I was not surprised that post-retirement working has health benefits. Moreover, I suspect the benefits are greater for men than for women. In my view, women handle retirement better than men. I could, of course, be wrong but, in my counselling work, I find that men are more likely than women to feel “lost” following retirement. Some men also seem to see retirement as the time to take to the armchair until the Grim Reaper comes calling. This is not good for the men. Moreover, the women find it all frustrating, which is also not good for the men.

Stir crazy
Quite apart from all that, I think many couples get on each other’s nerves following retirement if they are both stuck in the house at the same time. The woman, who had the traditional role of full-time or nearly full-time homemaker, finds that her home is “occupied” by someone who used to go out to work every day.

This latest research, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, shows that temporary or part-time work following retirement protects against many serious conditions and leads to better functioning in general. And you get paid as well!

The biggest benefits were found in people whose post-retirement work bore some relationship to what they had done in their previous careers. This, I would imagine, may be due to the satisfaction that comes from working in an area in which one has acquired a certain mastery.

There’s more to work than the money: a sense of achievement, camaraderie and fun are also part of working life and it may be these that account for the health benefits found by the University of Maryland researchers.

Benefits
The benefits were substantial. Researchers looked at the incidence of major diseases such as heart disease, stroke, lung disease, cancer and high blood pressure as well as psychiatric problems. Overall, they found that those who continued to so some work after retirement had a lower incidence of major diseases and better general level of functioning than people who retired completely.

The work could be part-time employment or self-employment. I expect that an involvement in voluntary work might have similar beneficial effects, although the study did not look into this.

The bright side
All of this is very cheering to me as one of those people who will have to go on working until and unless they win the lottery. Perhaps it might even cheer up some of those people who had expected to retire and now can’t because of our economic woes – alright, maybe not cheer them up but it offers some consolation at least.

You may not feel like whistling a merry tune and singing Hey Ho, Hey Ho, It's off to work we go as you grab your lunchbox on the way out the door. However, the fact remains that going on working is good for you, whether or not you need the money.