Keeping Granny Working and Thinking

“Keeping Granny on the Job” is just mean and unfair.

Or so I was told at least a half dozen times while planning a conference of the same name late last year. As the recession displayed evidence that some seniors were in fact delaying retirement, scholars at the event explored the ways that public policy encourages workers to retire as soon as they can, with unfortunate financial consequences.

Yet, with all the attention on granny’s finances, nothing was presented to other aspects of granny’s wellbeing. In a new research paper that appeared at almost same time as the conference, and that I’ve just discovered, researchers from the Rand Corporation, indicate that seniors who work have much better cognitive skills. They examine retirement trends internationally and find that people who work longer score better on cognitive tests.

Maybe our conference was wrong, there’s no need to keep seniors on the job. They should want to stay.