Retirement Gets Harder the Longer You Wait
7 min read
When President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he was ending his campaign for reelection, he took pains to describe his choice as one meant to serve the greater good. “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country,” he wrote in a statement. His decision seemed calculated to prioritize the health of the nation over his own self-interest—and, perhaps, above his own mental and physical well-being.
When people choose to retire, it’s generally a positive experience, without a sizable effect on mental health. But stepping away from a high-powered job, whether toward full retirement or a substantial reduction in work, is fraught for many Americans. And it’s especially difficult for Biden’s demographic: highly educated men who have continued working far past 65, the average retirement age for men. “Particularly for college-educated men in professional positions, there’s this expectation that your work is part of your identity,” Sarah Damaske, who studies gender and labor at Pennsylvania State University, told me. Losing it can have serious consequences. Being president has almost certainly harmed Biden’s health, and he has demonstrated symptoms of significant cognitive and physical decline during his term. But exiting the presidency in January will pose new cognitive challenges.
“When people are at the center of their universe through their job, we don’t have a storyline or a place in our society that is attractive enough to say, ‘Maybe I’ve had enough,’” says Joseph Coughlin, the founder and director of the MIT AgeLab. “You’re showing people the door with no direction.” That has implications for cognitive and emotional health. When a person starts to identify himself by the past tense—that he used to be a doctor, a teacher, or the president—he shifts his focus from his present and future to his past. Research shows that ruminating on the past can correlate with negative mental-health outcomes, including depression and a sense that one’s perspective and experiences are no longer relevant.
Many Americans who stay in high-powered positions into their 70s, 80s, and beyond do so out of a warranted concern over who they would be without the job. S. K. Park, 88, a former psychiatrist and professor at the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, never wanted to retire. But at 80, he told me, “I made up my mind to retire when I was still at the height of my cognitive ability. I was very conscious of not being a stubborn, obstinate old person.” At 84, 53 years after he started his job, Park left, figuring that he would turn to other interests: his children and grandson, calligraphy, hiking, and travel. But instead, “all of a sudden, life kind of stopped,” he said. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure how to spend his time or how he provided value to his community.
Stepping away from work—which can provide an identity, a routine, a social network, and a purpose—is linked to several ill effects on health, especially for older adults. It has been linked to declines in verbal memory, the skill that allows you to recall spoken and written information, crucial for tasks like giving a presentation and communicating with clients. A 2020 meta-analysis found that 28 percent of retirees suffer from depression. By comparison, 2019 estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation suggest that, around the world, only 13.8 percent of adults age 60 or older experience any kind of mental disorder.
Some doctors—a profession that notably skews older—are loath to retire precisely because they’re familiar with the medical literature. “I’m at least intellectually aware that in old age, people may fall into a state of despair,” Park said. “I’m trying hard not to fall into that hole.” Stephen Derbes, an 83-year-old rheumatologist at the LSU School of Medicine who still sees patients at the hospital, has no plans to retire. “I fear I would be very likely at risk of getting depressed if I just bailed out,” he told me. “As far as feelings of worth, that would be gone or at least diminished, since I wouldn’t have responsibilities.”
The loss of a professional self-identity is particularly acute for men, who often have weaker ties and self-definition outside of the workplace. “For men, traditionally, there’s a total identification with work,” says Jack Maslow, an 82-year-old clinical therapist who runs a men’s group in Corte Madera, California, treating his patients as they adjust to the transition away from work. Beth C. Truesdale, a sociologist who studies retirement and aging at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, told me, “Women have often had to find other ways to create a sense of who they are, beyond what they do.” They are more likely to be caregivers, to maintain social relationships on behalf of their spouse or family, and to volunteer in their communities. And by retirement age, women are more likely to have already taken breaks from paid work.
Gary Givler, a 77-year-old retired Episcopal deacon in Batavia, Ohio, sees the gendered struggle in the men’s group of retirees that he leads. For decades, Givler worked both as the vice president of an insurance company and as a deacon, with stints as a chaplain at a pediatric hospital and as a preacher. When he retired from his corporate job, in 2015, he started the men’s group at his church; he’s kept it up since his diaconal retirement, in 2023. Every Monday morning, the group of 15 men in their 70s and 80s—who retired from careers including engineering, teaching, and corporate leadership—meet at a local Panera Bread to talk about news, politics, and their lives. Yesterday, the conversation focused on Biden’s announcement: how he’d met the particular challenge of being pressured to end his campaign, and the courage it must have taken to publicly admit that he’s no longer the best candidate for the job. “The group thought that Joe did the right thing,” Givler said. But that didn’t change the men’s ambivalence about their own retirement. “A lot of them tell me they’d give anything to have a reason to put a shirt and tie on and go somewhere for an important meeting.”
Retirement doesn’t have to be accompanied by decline. Mo Wang, a professor at the University of Florida who studies retirement and older workers, estimates that retirement has a significant positive effect on psychological well-being for 5 to 10 percent of people, largely those who worked very physically demanding jobs. But Wang has also found that retirement is linked to negative psychological effects for 20 to 25 percent of workers, at least temporarily. Other research has shown that people in full retirement tend to fare worse physically than those who keep up some kind of bridge employment or volunteering. The effect can become more dramatic as workers age, because a decades-long routine—the same weekly schedule, the same commute, the same colleagues—might help them perform daily tasks. “Their experience can compensate for cognitive decline, so they’re able to work much longer,” Wang told me. When they transition away from a professional routine, the adjustment can be a rude awakening.
Many working-class Americans are pushed into early retirement because they can no longer manage a physically demanding job, such as construction or waitressing. Truesdale estimates that only 5 percent of Americans over 80 are still working. But that number is almost certain to rise. The oldest Baby Boomers are 78, and they’re generally working longer than their predecessors. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that adults age 65 and older will be 8.6 percent of the labor force in 2032, compared with 6.6 percent in 2022. “The aging population today, let alone those that are coming, have more formal education than at any time in history,” Coughlin told me. They’re also living longer than their forebears. Over the next decade, more Americans than ever will be placed in an unenviable position similar to Biden’s, facing a delayed retirement that’s likely to pose new health challenges.
Whether he likes it or not, Biden has personified the ungainly challenge of reckoning with one’s work performance and stepping back from the job before one would like to. Now he has an opportunity to show millions of Americans navigating their 70s and 80s how to reckon with their limitations and maintain pride beyond the job. The best way to prepare for retirement at an older age, Wang said, is to make the transition gradual. At age 70, start to reduce your work hours and invest time in nonwork interests so that by 80, you have a strong identity beyond your professional work. For those leaving intense, identity-defining jobs, that process can include mentorship or an elder-statesman role. “Because Biden is transitioning from a very powerful role, it would be good for him to channel that energy to help the transition of power,” Wang said.
Preparation, though, may not be enough to overcome the siren song of employment. Park missed his professional identity so much that this week, the 88-year-old went back to work, where he’ll resume supervising medical students. “I don’t think I should work until I die,” he told me. “I would quit myself if I go through what Biden seems to be going through.” But for now, he’s excited to get back to his career. When his current contract ends, he’ll be 89. “I will probably say that will be enough,” he said. “But never say never.”
