Does your job determine how you will feel in retirement?
Last updated on 8 March 2024
Key points:
- The Super Members Council of Australia reported that the gender super gap is now $65,000 for those nearing retirement
- On average, women retire sooner than men
- Women are retiring later than in previous years, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics
A new study by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health examined how retirement affects mental health and related inpatient mental health care among female workers.
The research specifically looked at differences between women working in blue-collar jobs, such as factory and trade labour, relative to white-collar roles, such as managing an office.
Researchers assessed female workers in China, given its unique retirement age policy and nationally representative inpatient medical claims data. Notably, occupations have varying mandatory ages when women must leave the workforce in China. For women in blue-collar jobs, the retirement age is 50 years old, while women in white-collar jobs typically work until age 55.
Hospital records, before and after these retirement-age cutoffs, revealed that for blue-collar workers, rates of hospital admissions for mental illnesses — including anxiety, depression and stress-related disorders, increased following retirement at age 50. However, there was no similar rise among white-collar females retiring five years later.
Blue-collar female retirees also utilised the emergency room more frequently for mental health crises after age 50, according to the study.
The research found a 16.6 percent increase in ER visits for urgent mental health conditions after female blue-collar workers retired. However, again, no similar growth in emergency care was seen among retired white-collar employees.
Similar trends have been observed in Australia, with the authors of a 2022 study concluding: “[…] participants with the cumulative health effects of decades in physically demanding jobs had built the ‘slowing down’ phase necessitated by older age and chronic health conditions into their work lives.”
Researchers behind the Yale study, published in March, suggested support targeting at-risk, blue-collar females could help them transition out of the workforce more smoothly, including improving their mental preparation.
Xi Chen, associate professor of public health at the Yale School of Public Health and a senior author of the study, said more research was needed to determine how the nature of a person’s employment impacts their health in retirement.
“The reasons blue-collar women experience worse mental health after retiring are still unclear, but it could be that job loss itself and lower incomes may hit these manual labourers harder psychologically and financially than their white-collar counterparts,” he said.
“Blue-collar workers also tend to have fewer resources to adapt to major life changes.”
Researchers noted that more needs to be done in order to identify optimal retirement ages and flexible retirement schemes for prospective retirees.
While the current study, published in Economics and Human Biology, was limited to female workers in China, the researchers said the findings can inform policymakers in other developing and developed countries experiencing increased worker life expectancy, growth in their ageing populations and concerns about the economic solvency of retirees.
In Australia, the minimum pension age is not determined by gender or the nature of one’s job, but by the year a person is born — as the increase from 65 years and six months to 67 years of age reflects changes in policy and trends in population age.
Poor mental health costs the Australian economy from $12.2 – $22.5 billion each year, according to the Australian Government Productivity Commission.
Research indicated that blue-collar workers may retire earlier and experience health issues due to a poor physical workplace. This, combined with psychosocial factors, may reduce their motivation to work.
Staff members globally identified the organisation of work, the content of job tasks, their influence at work and passing experiences onto younger generations as important.
Among former blue-collar workers, other health conditions, such as disabilities due to musculoskeletal disorders, were often cited as reasons to call it quits.
Do you think that retirement should vary by occupation or that people should adopt different strategies to enjoy their time after work? Let the team at Your Retirement Living know and subscribe to the newsletter for more news, information and industry updates.
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