The secret to a happier, healthier life: Just retire

[thenews]

Retirement, contrary to popular opinion, is not the time in which your satisfaction with life declines and your health deteriorates. Instead, it’s the exact opposite: Retirement is likely to improve your overall happiness and health, according to a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research this year.

And that improvement happens immediately, according to the authors of the paper, Aspen Gorry and Devon Gorry, both professors at Utah State University, and Sita Slavov, a professor at George Mason University.

But is it so obvious that retiring is better than working, and that you start to feel happier and healthier as soon as you retire?

Below, Aspen Gorry answers our questions about the study, its implications and what those planning for retirement should take away from the study.

Question: What were the study’s goals?

Answer: We wanted to study the effect of retirement on people’s well being and health as well as their health-care utilization. This question is really difficult to assess in the data because when people are faced with poor health, they often retire. Thus, looking at the raw correlation between people’s health and retirement status can give a misleading picture. If unhealthy or unhappy people are more likely to retire it will appear that retirement is bad for health and happiness. We wanted to know the causal effect of retirement on these outcomes. Beyond the importance to individuals as they make retirement decisions, the answers to these questions are also important for policy as countries decide whether to extend Social Security eligibility ages since health-care costs are often paid by the government.

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