As more Americans live longer and as the population ages, retirement is now measured for many in decades, rather than years. Understanding what that means and how much control we have over the later stages of life has taken on a new urgency.
Measuring the effect of retirement on physical, cognitive and mental abilities is a complex undertaking. It involves disentangling factors like career status and satisfaction, voluntary or involuntary retirement, socioeconomic class and financial stability, and overall health and health choices. There is also the difficulty of separating the effects of aging versus those of leaving the workplace.
With all those caveats, however, a 2025 analysis of 22 studies between 2013 and 2023 on the impact of retirement on cognitive functioning suggests “that retirement tends to decrease cognitive functioning and increase the rate of decline.” The international study, led by Chilean researchers, however, noted that “to fully establish a link between retirement and cognitive decline,” there must be more and better studies to reach a definitive conclusion.
Findings are also mixed in the area of physical health. So much in this area depends on the type of job and occupation one is leaving and why. Retirement shows more benefits for those leaving physically demanding, low-quality jobs or poor working conditions.
Research does consistently show it matters significantly whether someone chooses to leave a job or is pushed out. Those who are forced to retire from highly satisfying careers that are a major source of their identity are more likely to experience depression after they leave the workplace than those who dislike their jobs or leave voluntarily.
There is more solid evidence about how to make the last stages of life as healthy and rewarding as possible.
For example, research shows that meaningful social connections are very important for both good physical and mental health, but it’s the quality not the quantity. Some need a wide group of friends they see frequently; for others, it can be a few close relationships.
Some studies have shown that in addition to friendships, joining or maintaining a membership in a group correlates with better physical and mental well-being in retirement.
Having a sense of purpose, something quite hard to define, is increasingly seen as an important aspect of a satisfying retirement. It has been found in some studies to predict better physical health, and in others to protect against self-reported cognitive decline.
But purpose does generally decline over time, said Elliot M. Friedman, a professor of gerontology at Purdue University. During research for a paper that found sustained purpose in life is associated with slower cognitive decline, Professor Friedman and his colleagues looked at a decade of data from 9,800 Americans included in the Health and Retirement Study. Conducted by the University of Michigan, it used data from the Social Security Administration and the National Institute on Aging.
“Purpose manifests in different ways, so there’s not a one-size-fits-all,” said Patricia A. Thomas, an associate professor of sociology at Purdue and a co-author of the paper on sustained purpose in life. “Focusing on the small things that make you feel like you want to get up in the morning might be a simpler way to look at it than this giant, ambitious type of goal. It’s the small acts that can still be very meaningful and that can contribute to better cognitive function, better health and longevity in general.”
For more information see Alina Tugend “Is Retirement Unhealthy? It Depends.” The New York Times, October 16, 2026.