The future of retirement

A thought-provoking discussion of retirement that I came across had some amazing statistics:

Studies show that retirement is no good for you. Even if you hate the job you go to every day, sudden abrupt inactivity is a bad idea. A working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research entitled “The Effects of Retirement on Physical and Mental Health Outcomes” studied people in complete retirement over six years. It found that retirement led to a 5 to 6 percent increase in illness, a 6 to 9 percent decline in mental health, and a 5 to 16 percent increase in mobility difficulties.

It made me think of this video from Mosaic:

(If you’re curious, I was directed to the WaPo item quoted above from a different type of discussion in the Atlantic; the point there was the strain put on society when retirement ages are falling even as lifespans are increasing and birthrates falling.)