Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies

Tag: retirement

Study finds those who expected to be working at age 62 (but then weren’t) suffered from increase in depressive symptoms

Harvard Sloan Fellow on Aging and Work Leah Abrams, PhD, is an author on a paper published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series b that finds that middle-aged adults who experienced an “unexpected work exit” suffered from more depressive symptoms, whereas working longer than planned was not associated with an increase in these symptoms (except … Continue reading “Study finds those who expected to be working at age 62 (but then weren’t) suffered from increase in depressive symptoms”

The best-laid plans for retirement…

Harvard Sloan Fellow on Aging and Work Leah Abrams, PhD, recently published one of her dissertation papers in the journal Ageing & Society that found that among a cohort of Americans ages 51 – 61, it is common to have unmet expectations about retirement timing (e.g. working a shorter or longer time period than expected). … Continue reading “The best-laid plans for retirement…”

“This experiment has failed:” Beth Truesdale on shifting the burden of security in retirement to individuals

Harvard Pop Center Research Associate Beth Truesdale, PhD, has penned a Letter to the Editor published in The Boston Globe that calls for strengthening Social Security and employer-based retirement plans. Beth is currently co-editing a volume titled Overtime: America’s Aging Workforce and the Future of “Working Longer.” This project, which is funded by the Alfred … Continue reading ““This experiment has failed:” Beth Truesdale on shifting the burden of security in retirement to individuals”

Does retirement really lead to worse health? A closer look at women & men in Europe

Although it has been suggested that retirement can be bad for your health, Harvard Pop Center Bell Fellow Philip Hessel, PhD has taken a look at longitudinal data using an instrumental variables approach and his findings, published in Social Science & Medicine, suggest otherwise. Positive effects of retirement on health were found to exist for … Continue reading “Does retirement really lead to worse health? A closer look at women & men in Europe”

Occupational Exposure and Retiree Health

Study by Pop Center director Lisa Berkman, faculty member Maria Glymour and research fellow Erika Sabbath investigates whether health effects of combined occupational exposures during working life are observed after individuals retire and are no longer exposed.