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Retiring Early Can Cause Cognitive Decline.

Posted on 26th March 2023

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This article on My Modern Met reports on a study which has shown that early retirement is not good for your mental health. Well, duh! There is already plenty of research that shows the same.

If you ask a man what he is, he will typically answer with his job, but if you ask a woman , she will usually reply with a more personal answer. Then when the man retires, unless he has one or more engrossing and challenging hobbies, he will often be dead in 5 to 10 years, with cognitive decline being a major cause. Often, his wife's raison d'etre was looking after he man, and once he dies, her decline begins.

My father always had many projects on the go, building and mending stuff, and thankfully never went into cognitive decline. He died from other illnesses, and almost immediately thereafter, my mother was diagnosed with dementia. This kind of scenario is repeated time and time again around the world.

So, not only is early retirement not good for you, retirement at any age can trigger the start of a decline in health, mental and physical.

I therefore find it bizarre that Germany has a compulsory retirement age (currently 66 years old). This condemns many people to failing health, adding a financial burden on the state, as well as robbing the government of much needed tax revenue. There are a number of other nations that have mandatory retirement, and the same consequences for people's health and the economy.

Many countries are currently reviewing their retirement legislation (the age, and whether or not it is compulsory), motivated, at least in part, by the fact that government pensions are underfunded as the age of their populations increases.

One thing that I do find bizarre is the reaction (protests and strikes) in France because the government is trying to increase the retirement age from its current 62 years. It seems that French workers do not know what is good for them.