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A Working Man is a Healthy Man
OK, you're only 30-years-old - or maybe even 40 or 50 - and are already fantasizing about retiring. You've got the (fill in the blank: stock options, trust fund, rich wife) in place and now the only question is when. What's the best time to devote yourself full-time to golf?
In terms of the picture, not working, whether by choice or not, is worse for us than working.
A dreadful thought, perhaps - particularly if working for a living has never agreed with you.1 But epidemiological higher analyses of every variety have long concluded that men who retire early don't live as long as men who keep working late into geezerhood. Given the opportunity to fill our days with nothing but recreational activity, we get in trouble - get beaned by a shanked golf ball, fall off a fishing boat after a beer too many, that kind of thing.
Anything that removes us too much from the nurturing world of women is simply bad for our health. That's not to say that we don't suffer some ill effects from work. Men are the victims of more than 90 percent of all job-related accidents. Our highly competitive instincts also propel us to advance in our professions and climbing the ladder can be stressful (although interestingly, most CEO's are in excellent health; they're highly resilient, born leaders).
?Any job in which the tasks are slightly beyond our reach is going to cause stress - along with the high blood pressure, depressed immunity and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. But, then, raising children is stressful. Unemployment is really stressful. Vacations can be stressful. Driving in Milan is even a nightmare.
The point is that, in terms of the picture, not working, whether by choice or not, is worse for us than working. This has always been true, but now there are some modern wrinkles on this truism that reflect changing gender roles.
REWARDS OF SUCCESS
Work is good for men - especially if the proper conditions are in place. For instance - and this is not likely to sit well with social egalitarians - men who are married to "homemaker" wives are more likely to have upwardly mobile careers. That's the conclusion of the Cornell University Retirement and Well-Being Study, which also found the converse to be true: Men married to women who work full-time are more likely to have downwardly mobile careers. From other data, we know that a successful and accomplished man is a healthy and happy man.
? A recent Scottish study also points to the effects changing gender roles are having on men's working life. The increased number of women in both part-time and full-time work, the researchers say, may indirectly be responsible for rising rates of suicide and depression in men, at least in the British Isles. For men, the resultant loss of status as sole financial provider for the family and the perceived loss of social status could all be risk factors for depression.
?Family life also affects the benefits a man obtains from work. After having a baby, American men work longer hours, particularly if the child is a boy.
?"We can only guess that having a son increases the value of marriage and family for men," says Shelly Lundberg, a psychologist at the University of Washington, an economics professor who did the research. Using data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, he found that the birth of a first son generated an average increase in a man's work time of 84 hours every year after the boy's birth - the equivalent of more than two additional weeks on the job. Men added only 31 hours after having a daughter. They also discovered a "fatherhood premium" that raised men's hourly wages by about 5 percent every time they fathered a child.
?RETIREMENT
Research repeatedly has shown that a working family man with more disposable income is a happier, healthier man.
Still not convinced? The findings of people who study retirement suggest some good reasons not to retire. For one thing, newly retired men experience more marital conflict than non-retired men. Your wife simply finds it stressful to wonder whether you've been beaned by a golf ball or bobbing in the ocean next to your empty beer can.
The good news is that you can regain whatever you may have lost by retiring - and then going back to work. Psychologists Jungmeen E. Kim and Phyllis Moen of Cornell found that men who retire often gain a new lease on life when they decide to go back to work.
"Post-retirement employment appears to be beneficial for their psychological well-being," says Kim. Those who are retired and re-employed report the highest morale and lowest depression. And men who are retired and not re-employed experience the lowest morale and most depression.
Their study of 534 married men and women between 50 and 74 found the work-status links to morale and depression were regardless of age, income and health.
So suck it up, buddy, and plan to work until you drop. It's one prescription for longevity that is known to work.
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