如何更健康的退休？

所属教程:金融时报原文阅读

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2020年07月09日

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如何更健康的退休？

近日有研究表明：宽松的退休政策和认识新朋友有助于获得更久。广场舞或许就是个不错的途径。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

sylvan 森林['sɪlv(ə)n]

eligibility 资格[,elɪdʒə'bɪlətɪ]

cardiovascular 心血管的[,kɑːdɪəʊ'væskjʊlə]

depressive 抑郁的[dɪ'presɪv]

glean 一点点收集[gliːn]

stroke 中风[strəʊk]

borough 自治市['bʌrə]

fatigue 疲劳[fə'tiːg]

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A slow exit from the workforce is the healthier way to retire （533words）

By Charles Wallace

* * *

A colleague from the financial world recently announced on Facebook that he had retired to the woodsy north-east of the US and that he was looking forward to spending his days fishing and hiking in a sylvan landscape far from Wall Street.

I, of course, wished him well but I had to wonder what the medical record shows for people who have unplugged from their busy careers and left behind a mentally stimulating life.

This is not an idle question: as the baby boomer generation ages, the number of people of retirement age in the US is projected to double from 36m in 2003 to 72m in 2030. Governments everywhere are debating whether and how far to raise the age of eligibility for state pensions because of the effect on the public purse.

It turns out that health studies of retirement are a mixed bag. One study in 2012 that received a lot of attention came from the Harvard School of Public Health. It looked at 5,422 individuals in the US and found there was a 40 per cent increase in heart attacks and strokes among those who had retired, compared with those of a similar age still working.

Perhaps even more striking, the study found that most of the cardiovascular events happened in the year after retirement. When I contacted the lead researcher of the study, J Robin Moon, a sociologist now working on health systems in the Bronx, a poor borough of New York City, she said her statistical analysis might reflect “reverse causality”: in other words, people may have been forced to retire because they already had cardiovascular disease, not the other way around.

Those who were only semi-retired — working part-time — had substantially less risk of a heart attack. So Ms Moon ponders whether the ill-health effects have something to do with the US way of retirement, where people enter a life “that is completely different from what you’re used to with so many changes . . . physically, socially and economic”.

In contrast, a number of studies in Europe have had results very different from the Harvard research. A multiyear study of the pension system in Germany found that retirement “has a positive effect on health, increasing the probability of reporting to be in satisfactory health and mental health” and even reducing the number of visits paid to the doctor.

Likewise, a study in France of 11,246 men and 2,858 women found that retirement was associated with a “substantial reduction in mental and physical fatigue and depressive symptoms”.

Of course, poor health does not happen overnight, even though events such as heart attacks and strokes are usually recorded as sudden events. Volumes have been written comparing the typical French diet with its US counterpart, which often contains more sugar and less fresh fruit and vegetables.

Another fascinating insight Ms Moon gleaned in an unpublished study was that people who are retired but have frequent contact with neighbours and friends tend to be healthier.

If you can form social bonds and enjoy a smooth transition from full-time work to not working at all, the cardiovascular health effect was mediated. “Retirement is not the toxic factor, it’s the things that come with it,” she concludes.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1. Why there are so many people retiring in 2030?

a. previous baby boomer generation

b. slashed pensions

c. falling wages

d. great living pressure

2. Who debates whether and how far to raise the age of eligibility for state pensions?

a. retiree

b. governments

c. retiree

d. corporate executives

3. Who are more likely to have heart attacks and strokes by Harvard’s studies?