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Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

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

#231

Post by benchwright »

dkga wrote: post #230
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…

I think it is also more than that. In car-centric places like Brazil or the US, older people essentially need to drive or be driven around to have a social life. In pedestrian friendly cities like many in Europe, it is very common to see older people walking to meet their friends/relatives. I saw it all the time in Switzerland. Even those with severely limited mobility would prefer to actively walk or take the tram/b…

Can agree with this (to a certain extent). Spending time in both America and Ireland, there's a definite difference in the extent to which "I can only get there by car versus public transit/other types of transport" is incorporated into the culture. By far, more urban/suburban/rural density with appropriate public transportation support leads to more freedom to walk, bike, etc. Geographically, however, there are clear reasons why places like the US and Brazil have a strong incentive to rely on cars over anything else. Distance between cities and towns, poor public transport (esp. outside of urban areas in the US), etc. cause this to be an issue.

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

#232

Post by joquarky »

Aurornis wrote: post #175
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…

> 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…

That's a 24% change which is well above the threshold of significance.

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

#233

Post by dylan604 »

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…

> I know many people with a lot of free time. In the vast majority of cases, people spend their free time in almost exactly the same way they spent their free time when they had less of it. Binging on social media, television, or games? Now they just do more of it for longer. The people that volunteer more were already doing it, and they are in the small minority.

This is why I am so thankful that I grew up before the days of social media and devices. I have direct first hand knowledge that the world does not end because some feed hasn't been checked in the past 5 minutes. I am forced to hear others doom scrolling their feeds and listening to the disjointed audio from short clips looping or getting interrupted to get to the next one, and I am constantly reminded of those that would sit on the sofa with the remote constantly flipping channels. Nothing was on the screen long enough to really see what was on, but just enough they decided not what they wanted to see. It's like the exact same personality cranked to 11.

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

#234

Post by bruce511 »

Aurornis wrote: post #175
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…

> 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…

People sometimes underestimate how much work goes into a new business. The idea that you'll fill "spare time" with a business is laughable.

(I'm not thinking of a making-money-from-my-hobby side gig, but an actual business.)

You can do a side-hustle in spare time, but an actual business, one that pays salaries every month takes enormous effort.

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

#235

Post by fendy3002 »

spartanatreyu wrote: post #178
jandrewrogers wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yep, the statement is so bad with a pattern of "because most won't, then all won't", which commonly used during birth rate issues too. It's either ignorant or malicious with hidden agenda behind.

Giving employees 1 week of free time? That's nothing, and nothing will change too as a result. Give them a whole month of free time? I bet they will make some small, short term projects, even doing hobbies like gaming, fishing, cooking or golfing where it wasn't available before.

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

#236

Post by fyredge »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #216
Aurornis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The people that make it work usually take RE to mean “recreationally employed”. They aren’t sitting on a beach. They have a challenging project they are personally obsessed with that also generates income, but the income is largely just a way to keep score for them.

> recreationally employed

It is one of my greatest hope for everyone to be able to achieve this. It would shift the workplace dynamic so much that employers would have to work harder (beyond pizza parties) to retain employees since no one would blink an eye at the thought of resigning on the spot.

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

#237

Post by jamesfinlayson »

andix wrote: post #126
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.

In my experience its really hard to find something that connects people of different age groups in a meaningful way, that doesn't involve a workplace-like setting. Older and younger people often just don't compromise enough from an intrinsic motivation to make it work. If they are somehow forced to work together, and have to make compromises, it suddenly works much better. They also benefit and enjoy it. It doesn't h…

> Money is a really good motivator for people not to quit on the first frustrating experience.

So true. I volunteer in an organisation with many older members, and a few of the older members have a thinly-veiled disdain for the younger people who don't contribute the same time and effort that they do... so some young people just stop turning up because they don't want some retiree with no life judging them for having a job, family commitments etc.

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

#238

Post by jamesfinlayson »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #151
hallole wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Traditional marriage was primarily an economic contract." I don't buy this. You can, for the purposes of your argument, reduce marriage to being something like an economic contract, that's fine; but, in reality, that's not what marriage is/has been primarily about. Also, solving the burden of work for one sex isn't a solution. Granted, it's better than nothing.

> that's not what marriage is/has been primarily about Ancient societies' marriages we have records about were principally about economics and politics. Maybe the poor were having love marriages. We don't know because most of our sources couldn't be bothered with them. But to the degree we have evidence, it's in even poor landowners preferring to marry children off to the owners of adjoining plots. Like, maybe that's…

Low sample size but two sets of ancestors from agricultural societies that married in the 1920s weren't especially happy together from what I've been told. One of the marriages was definitely a result of adjacent land though in neither case was it child of wealthy person getting married off to child of another wealthy person.

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

#240

Post by oblio »

jerlam wrote: post #138
dividefuel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think that once an elderly person loses the ability to drive, it's often a big tipping point towards their decline. I would suspect that losing the ability to drive usually (but not necessarily) comes before losing the ability to navigate public transit. But I don't immediately believe the link that 'car culture' -> 'earlier cognitive decline'. Car culture, for example, is usually associated with living on large…

If the additional area is used for new hobbies, hosting guests, or something fulfilling and interesting, then sure it can help keep the mind active. But people don't usually retire so they have more time for vacuuming or dusting. Many elderly people simply don't have the energy or interest to maintain their homes, it slowly falls into disrepair.

There is a specific smell for old person homes.
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