Comment by marginalia_nu
1 day ago
How are we sure about the direction of cause and effect here? I'd expect more healthier people to self-select the working cohort, all else being equal.
1 day ago
How are we sure about the direction of cause and effect here? I'd expect more healthier people to self-select the working cohort, all else being equal.
In practice it doesn't really work that way. It isn't like "I am ill bodied, I ought to retire." It is more like "I am ill bodied, but I can't afford to retire, so I must work in some capacity." People who retire early are probably far more likely to be wealthier, and that is correlated with healthspan.
It's hard to prove or falsify this statement.
> Early retirement is increasingly a preserve of the wealthy. Back in 2002–03, the fraction of those who were retired aged 55–64 was fairly similar across the wealth distribution: 20% in the poorest fifth compared to 28% for the wealthiest fifth. In contrast, by 2018–19, only 7% of the poorest fifth were retired, while for the wealthiest fifth it was still 24%.
https://ifs.org.uk/news/early-retirement-increasingly-concen...
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Yeah this seems like an obvious confounder.