Is retirement good for your health? A systematic review of longitudinal studies

BMC Public Health

Table 3 Evidence for the impact of retirement on various health outcomes from longitudinal studies on retirement and health

Outcome	Impact of retirement^a		Best evidence synthesis^b
	High quality studies	Low quality studies
Perceived health	0 ²³	0 ^{25, 31, 32}	Insufficient evidence
	+ ^{11, 17}	+ ²⁸
	- ³⁵
	? ³⁴	? ³³
Mental health	+ ^{16, 23, 24, 26, 27, 36}	+ ^{25, 31, 37, 38}	Strong evidence
Mental health		0 ^{28, 30, 31}	Strong evidence
Physical health
Somatic complaints	0 ²⁹		Insufficient evidence
Physical functioning	- ^{26, 27}	0 ³⁸	Insufficient evidence^c
Physical fatigue	+ ¹⁶	0 ³¹	Insufficient evidence
Disability		? ⁴¹	Insufficient evidence
Chronic or (irreversible) illness	0 ¹⁶	0 ⁴⁰	Insufficient evidence
	- ³⁹	- ²⁸
		+ ³¹
Perceived serious health problems	0 ³⁴		Insufficient evidence

^a? = unclear (including not shown to be statistically significant); 0 = no change; + = improvement; - = decline.
^bStrong evidence: consistent findings in multiple (≥ 2) high-quality studies; Moderate evidence: consistent findings in one high-quality study and at least one low-quality study, or consistent findings in multiple low-quality studies; Insufficient evidence: only one study available or inconsistent findings in multiple (≥ 2) studies. Consistency of results was determined following that for at least 75% of the studies reporting on a particular relation the results should be in the same direction, defined by p < 0.05 [20–22].
^cInsufficient evidence because both studies use data from the same study.