By John Salak –
Retirement is a mixed bag for many. It is supposed to signal a gateway to reward and relaxation for mature adults. In reality, it’s a time of building emotional stress for many as they worry about financial solvency, medical issues and keeping their life filled after work ends.
Some new retirees even face clinical depression or anxiety because they feel isolated or suffer a loss of identity, making retirement the tenth more stressful life event, according to Helpguide.org.
Yale School of Public Health recently dug deeper into the impact of retirement on mental health when it examined how it affected female workers in China, leveraging China’s unique retirement age policy. The results underscored the pressures some retirees face.
The research specifically looked at differences between women working in blue-collar jobs, such as factory and trade labor, and those in white-collar roles, such as managing an office. In China’s retirement system, occupations have varying mandatory ages when women must leave the workforce. For women in blue-collar jobs, the retirement age is 50 years old, while women in white-collar jobs typically work until age 55.
In comparison, the average retirement age across all sectors in the U.S. is 64 with the standard age being 66.
The study concluded after analyzing hospital records right before and after these retirement-age cutoffs. The research team found that blue-collar Chinese workers face more problems than white-collar employees. In particular, they faced increased hospital admissions following retirement at age 50 for mental illnesses, including anxiety, depression and stress-related disorders. There was no similar rise among white-collar females retiring five years later.
The Yale study also reported that blue-collar retirees saw a 16.6 percent increase in emergency room visits for mental health crises after age 50, while retired white-collar employees didn’t register any gains.
“The reasons blue-collar women experience worse mental health after retiring are still unclear,” said the study’s senior author Xi Chen, associate professor of public health. “But it could be that job loss itself and lower incomes may hit these manual laborers harder psychologically and financially than their white-collar counterparts. Blue-collar workers also tend to have fewer resources to adapt to major life changes.”
Ultimately, the findings reveal that China’s retirement policies impact female workers differently depending on the nature of their jobs. More research, nonetheless, is needed both to understand the differences in impact and to develop recommendations for optimal retirement ages.
It is also unclear if direct associations can be made between the experience retirement has on Chinese workers and American employees. However, some possible comparisons may be possible in terms of a retiree’s financial strength and mental well-being.
The retirement-related issues facing China are particularly press and likely different than with many other countries. China, after all, has the world’s largest and fastest-growing aging population. It also faces ballooning economic pressures within its pension and healthcare system. Currently, for example, approximately 20 million new retirees enter Chinese society annually.
