ArticleSSM - population health2021
Does postponing retirement affect cognitive function? A counterfactual experiment to disentangle life course risk factors.
Article in SSM - population health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Estimated labor market outcomes of people progressing from preclinical to early-stage Alzheimer's disease in the United States.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Timing of retirement and cognitive decline among older black adults: Study of Healthy Aging in African Americans (STAR).Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Review
- Disentangling social isolation, loneliness, and later-life cognitive function for older adults in the United States: evidence from causal inference modeling.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
- The transition to retirement and subsequent physical health among middle-aged and older adults in China: A life course perspective.PloS one · 2026Article
- Concurrent changes in sleep and cognitive function during retirement transition: the Finnish retirement and aging study.European journal of ageing · 2025Article
- Simulating hierarchical data to assess the utility of ecological versus multilevel analyses in obtaining individual-level causal effects.BMC medical research methodology · 2025Article
- Memory function and early exit from paid employment through different pathways among ageing European workers.Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health · 2025Article
- Fluid Cognition Among Individuals With Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.Arthritis care & research · 2024Article
- Adult Development and Associated Health Risks.Journal of patient-centered research and reviews · 2024Article
- Weakness Thresholds Are Differentially Linked to Cognitive Function by Obesity Status in Older Americans.Journal of Alzheimer's disease reports · 2024Article
- Retirement age and disability status as pathways to later-life cognitive impairment: Evidence from the Norwegian HUNT Study linked with Norwegian population registers.International journal of geriatric psychiatry · 2023Article
- The aging mind: A complex challenge for research and practice.Aging brain · 2023Review
- Demand Coupling Drives Neurodegeneration: A Model of Age-Related Cognitive Decline and Dementia.Cells · 2022Review
- Physical activity and gender buffer the association of retirement with functional impairment in Ghana.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Pandora's Box.BJPsych international · 2021Review
- Complementary and Alternative Medicine Approaches in Alzheimer Disease and Other Neurocognitive Disorders.Missouri medicineReview
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Evidence suggests that contemporaneous labor force participation affects cognitive function; however, it is unclear whether it is employment itself or endogenous factors related to individuals' likelihood of employment that protects against cognitive decline. We exploit innovations in counterfactual causal inference to disentangle the effect of postponing retirement on later-life cognitive function from the effects of other life-course factors. With the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (1996-2014, n = 20,469), we use the parametric g-formula to estimate the effect of postponing retirement to age 67. We also study whether the benefit of postponing retirement is affected by gender, education, and/or occupation, and whether retirement affects cognitive function through depressive symptoms or comorbidities. We find that postponing retirement is protective against cognitive decline, accounting for other life-course factors (population: 0.34, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.20,0.47; individual: 0.43, 95% CI: 0.26,0.60). The extent of the protective effect depends on subgroup, with the highest educated experiencing the greatest mitigation of cognitive decline (individual: 50%, 95% CI: 32%,71%). By using innovative models that better reflect the empirical reality of interconnected life-course processes, this work makes progress in understanding how retirement affects cognitive function.
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