Why is later age at retirement beneficial for cognition? Results from a French population-based study

Grotz, Catherine; Meillon, Céline; Amieva, Hélène; Stern, Yaakov; Dartigues, Jean‐François; Adam, Stéphane; Letenneur, Luc

doi:10.1007/s12603-015-0599-4

Cited by 26 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…According to the literature, a later age of retirement is related to decreased dementia risk, including later onset of AD, 5‐8 and better preserved cognitive function 20 . The results from the present study, showing that a higher age of retirement is associated with a reduced risk of dementia, are consistent with these earlier findings.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…A common explanation for why delaying retirement may be beneficial for cognitive health is that retirement may be associated with a drop in mental and social stimulation. Accordingly, it has been proposed that people who work for a longer time keep up their cognitive level for a longer period, thereby reducing the risk of dementia diseases or delaying its onset 5‐8 . As such, the results are consistent with a “use it or lose it” perspective and the cognitive reserve hypothesis 2,21 …”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 69%

“…The potential protective effect of staying active longer for dementia is of fundamental importance also from a socioeconomic perspective. We may need to work longer to cope with increased costs associated with population aging seen in Western countries, and this issue have consequently been addressed in a few previous studies 5‐8 . For example, Lupton et al 5 conducted a retrospective study, based on probable AD cases, showing later retirement age to delay the onset of AD.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A nationwide Swedish study of age at retirement and dementia risk

Sundström

Rönnlund

Josefsson

2020

Int J Geriat Psychiatry

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Objectives The aim of this nationwide study was to examine the association between age at retirement and dementia risk, with a follow‐up period of up to 24 years. Methods/design This cohort study comprised Swedish citizens born in 1930 who were alive in the year 1990 (n = 63 505). The cohort was followed for incidents of dementia through data provided by the Swedish National Patient Register and the Cause of Death Register. Age at retirement and socioeconomic variables were retrieved from Statistics Sweden. Results During the follow‐up, 5181 individuals received a dementia diagnosis. Competing risk regression models, adjusted for sex, education, marital status, occupation, and previous history of cardiovascular diseases, showed that later‐than‐average retirement age was associated with decreased dementia risk. Conclusions The present results support the idea that individuals who retired at an older age have a decrease risk of dementia. However, as this was an observation study, unmeasured factors, such as premorbid cognitive level and genetic predisposition, may have influenced our findings and remains to be elucidated in future studies.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 69%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A nationwide Swedish study of age at retirement and dementia risk

Sundström

Rönnlund

Josefsson

2020

Int J Geriat Psychiatry

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“…Accordingly, retirement may be a potential trigger for cognitive decline, assuming that retirees leave paid work that is cognitively demanding. Many studies have supported this assumption showing that retirement is associated with lower cognitive functioning [ 18 – 23 ], and later retirement is associated with better cognition and lower risk of dementia [ 24 – 27 ], although some studies have found no association [ 28 , 29 ] or even a positive effect [ 30 ] of retirement on levels of cognition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of retirement on cognitive function: the Whitehall II cohort study

et al. 2017

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According to the ‘use it or lose it’ hypothesis, a lack of mentally challenging activities might exacerbate the loss of cognitive function. On this basis, retirement has been suggested to increase the risk of cognitive decline, but evidence from studies with long follow-up is lacking. We tested this hypothesis in a cohort of 3433 civil servants who participated in the Whitehall II Study, including repeated measurements of cognitive functioning up to 14 years before and 14 years after retirement. Piecewise models, centred at the year of retirement, were used to compare trajectories of verbal memory, abstract reasoning, phonemic verbal fluency, and semantic verbal fluency before and after retirement. We found that all domains of cognition declined over time. Declines in verbal memory were 38% faster after retirement compared to before, after taking account of age-related decline. In analyses stratified by employment grade, higher employment grade was protective against verbal memory decline while people were still working, but this ‘protective effect’ was lost when individuals retired, resulting in a similar rate of decline post-retirement across employment grades. We did not find a significant impact of retirement on the other cognitive domains. In conclusion, these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that retirement accelerates the decline in verbal memory function. This study points to the benefits of cognitively stimulating activities associated with employment that could benefit older people’s memory.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s10654-017-0347-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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“…Specifically, some studies suggested that a late retirement and thus remaining longer in the stimulating occupational environment may help preserving cognitive functioning and to delay cognitive impairments in old age (e.g. Lupton et al, 2010;Bonsang et al, 2012;Mazzonna and Peracchi, 2012;Dufouil et al, 2014;Grotz et al, 2016). Yet, some authors argued that such effects of timing of retirement on late-life cognition may be overestimated (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%