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Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

nber.org

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Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#171

Post by SilentM68 »

The primary argument of this NBER working paper is that "employment, particularly near retirement age, can slow the rate of cognitive decline."

Would this not depend on the type of work being done and type of working conditions? Doesn't working in a boring, unchallenging, repetitive, dead-end job, dull the senses? Also, now a day, people continue to work even into their 70s, 80s, and even 90s, at least those that can find work. I don't see many people opting to retire when they have bills to pay.

Stan Lee used to say something along the lines of: “I’m not working, I’m playing!” If the job feels like fun, then the primary argument makes more sense to me. Based on past experience, however, I can relate to the later as my senses definitely got dulled, add to that compounding age-related health problems which did not help.

I try to do some Sudoku & Mahjongg puzzles at least twice a day, in my Linux machine, just to keep my mind awake.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#172

Post by nate »

antisthenes wrote: post #117
nate wrote: post #14

We probably all have anecdotal evidence here, but my father is a perfect example of being no longer employed and a ton of stuff declining. Yes, cognitively, but a lot of health. We're talking not just your "career". He was a commercial real estate agent. But in his 80s he was working at Menards as a greeter and stocker. And it kept him busy. Getting out of the house. Figuring things out. Meeting and talking to people…

> But in his 80s he was working at Menards as a greeter and stocker. > He had to stop to help take more care of my mom, and quickly, he just fell out of all these things. Cognitively. Health. Ability to do anything decision wise or to better himself just tanked. It's a nice "just so" story, but when you're in your 80s, you are already in multiple stages of decline across the board. One small injury can cause a cascad…

"how you can so authoritatively state this" => because that is the exact order of events :) A happened. Then B happened. i didn't say A caused B. just like we're all discussing here in this thread. just another datapoint that we are sharing here where it seems like there could be a causation not just correlation. but i didn't authoritatively state anything other than I know what happened on one date, and then what happened on another date.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#173

Post by tayo42 »

devilsdata wrote: post #158
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

The reason people go from work to nothing on retirement is because work fills up the nearly all of the productive hours of a person's life. If it were to take, let's say 4 days, or six hours a day, people would be so bored, they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering. And then on retirement, people would still have their hobbies and passion projects they had been working on their entire life. Th…

Ever try waking up early and doing your work stuff before work?

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#174

Post by vkou »

mannanj wrote: post #145
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

For most, work in America seems inherently undignified.

Authoritarian hierarchies (Which is precisely what your workplace is) rarely have dignity to spare for the people building the pharaoh's pyramid.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#175

Post by Aurornis »

devilsdata wrote: post #158
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #35

The problem isn't retirement per se, it is that people don't have things to occupy themselves with. They retire and they vegetate. I worked with a lady that was in her 70s who was deathly afraid of retiring because she didn't have anything to do. That's beyond depressing to me, to be incapable of even conceiving of doing something that doesn't involve going to a job. We have created people that never develop as human…

The reason people go from work to nothing on retirement is because work fills up the nearly all of the productive hours of a person's life. If it were to take, let's say 4 days, or six hours a day, people would be so bored, they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering. And then on retirement, people would still have their hobbies and passion projects they had been working on their entire life. Th…

> The reason people go from work to nothing on retirement is because work fills up the nearly all of the productive hours of a person's life. If it were to take, let's say 4 days, or six hours a day, people would be so bored, they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering.

I don't buy this construction of the workday where spending 50% of your awake hours at work leaves people so exhausted they can't do anything else with their lives, but if we changed that to 38% of their waking hours they'd be so bored that they be starting businesses and volunteering all over. That's not even consistent with your own experience of being exhausted halfway through the work day. Two extra hours per day isn't going to translate to launching a new business or volunteer effort.

You hinted at the real problem: Most people don't have the time management skills and motivation that they think they do. Remove a couple hours of work per week from most people's lives and those hours will get redistributed to mostly leisure time. Some of it more productive than other options (socializing with the community, working on hobbies).

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#176

Post by david-gpu »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #49
seattle_spring wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might be. Most retired folks I know just end up watching TV all day. Not even "good" TV-- it's mostly game-shows and 24-hour news cycles.

I've heard that you can expect your retirement to look a lot like your average weekend. If your weekends naturally fill with your hobbies and interests, I don't think you have much to worry about.

My experience has been exactly that: retirement = uninterrupted weekend.

I can't understand people who can't conceive of a healthy fulfilling life that does not involve work or volunteering. There is more to life than laboring.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#177

Post by Aurornis »

philipallstar wrote: post #103
ElevenLathe wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've built a society where our only consistent interaction with community (for many people) is via the labor market. Severing all social connections will make a person deteriorate at any age. This is why solitary confinement is a cruel punishment.

This is the outcome of everyone working. There's no alternate, complementary system (mostly women) of interesting, society-strengthening activities. Everyone works because they have to, because otherwise they won't afford a house when competing against two-income households, so everyone's busy, so everything's a rush and far more activities that used to be done are now monetised. No time for baking treats; just buy s…

> No time for baking treats

> No time for being a governor at the local school

The way the internet talks about employment is so foreign compared to real life.

Does anyone really believe that having a job precludes baking treats? Or volunteering at a school? My kids' school and all of my friends' kids' schools have parent-run boards and other organizations where most of the participants also have jobs.

Outside of the accounts I read on the internet, the many people I know in person have lives outside of their jobs. Having a job is the default state for most people, yet we're out here doing things and interacting with each other.

> No way to teach the next generation how to run a home on a budget or cook healthy for for their kids, the boss needs coffee.

You people know that kids go to school during the workday, right? And that people teach their kids how to cook while also having jobs during the day?

This is all so weird to read as a parent. Like I'm reading about a different world where everyone is working 100 hours per week

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#178

Post by spartanatreyu »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #161
devilsdata wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people go from work to nothing on retirement is because work fills up the nearly all of the productive hours of a person's life. If it were to take, let's say 4 days, or six hours a day, people would be so bored, they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering. And then on retirement, people would still have their hobbies and passion projects they had been working on their entire life. Th…

> they would be making projects, business ventures, or volunteering This is not what actually happens in practice. There is no sudden outbreak of productive activity because people have more free time. If this was going to occur there would be mountains of empirical evidence for it by now because this situation isn't rare. I know many people with a lot of free time. In the vast majority of cases, people spend their f…

> There is no sudden outbreak of productive activity because people have more free time.

I can't recall which studies they were, but I was under the impression that with a sudden expansion of free time, the earliest productivity gains don't occur until months later at the earliest.

I think the effect came up in long-term UBI trial participants, and those that acquired sudden wealth from inheritance / lottery / stocks / etc...

There tends to be a decompression stage after leaving work environment that didn't suit the person, then a deconstruction / rebuilding / searching stage afterwards.

I think it's also common for large lottery winners to become depressed because they have trouble searching for what to do afterwards.

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#179

Post by monocasa »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #150
entropicdrifter wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, ancient societies had more in-person community and common free third-spaces for people to congregate, socialize, and otherwise involve themselves with their communities

> ancient societies had more in-person community and common free third-spaces For the elites. Most people in the population were doing back-breaking labor. I'm not saying there wasn't leisure. But when most of a society's labor goes into agriculture, most of the leisure time is going to be spent on the farm with fellow farmhands. (The exception being winter months.)

Medieval serfs typically worked about 150 10 hour days a year.

In addition to the winter months there's a lot of gaps where the plants are in the ground, and now just need intermittent maintenance.

All of this of course ignores women's work, which was more omnipresent across the year. But it was also pretty social as well, hence the lasting power of phrases like "sewing circles".

Re: Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

#180

Post by Aurornis »

qwerpy wrote: post #109
stouset wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to follow FIRE-related communities. There were a depressing number of people who would post something along the lines of “I just pulled the trigger! Now what am I supposed to do to fill the time?” Your take is spot on, and it’s incredibly sad the number of people we’ve created whose only source of meaning or joy in their life is their desk job. As someone who pulled the trigger about a year ago, I feel like th…

I don't understand why someone would FIRE and not already have spent years lining up all the things they will do. And the "won't you be so bored?" people. No, I'm not bored. You might be because you need someone else to tell you how to spend your hours. Between learning new hobbies, tackling my backlog of projects in my old hobbies, taking care of my health, and spending quality time with my family, I still have more…

> I don't understand why someone would FIRE and not already have spent years lining up all the things they will do.

It's a common phenomenon in those communities because many of the participants are young (the E is for Early retirement).

The common way to get to FIRE, unless hitting the lottery or getting a crazy RSU payout, is to be super frugal with a high savings rate.

Then they get to retirement and realize that doing the amazing things like traveling the world requires a lot of money. Even many hobbies start to require money. Then reading books, browsing the internet, and playing games starts to get boring when it's your entire life.

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