Why Women May Want to Work Longer: It's About More Than Money

A portrait of an upholsterer in her workshop. She leans against a chair frame with her colleague working in the background. — (Image credit: Getty Images)

A growing number of older workers are choosing to retire later. There are many potential reasons for this, including the rise of remote work, changing views on the nature of retirement and financial stress that makes retirement unappealing for those who have saved too little.

Earning a paycheck for more years of your life undeniably has a positive impact on your pocketbook, as you don't need to rely on your savings as soon. You can also save more and potentially increase Social Security benefits in two ways. First, by delaying your start to benefits, and second, by boosting your "average wage" (used to calculate your Social Security benefits), especially if you're earning more on an inflation-adjusted basis than at earlier points in your career.

But what about the effect on your mental and physical health? Does staying on the job into the traditional retirement years improve your mind and body, or does the extra career stress and physical labor cause damage that could affect your future health and happiness? The good news, for women at least, is that recent research shows a longer working life may actually be helpful in slowing both physical and mental decline.

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Women in their 60s get significant benefits from being on the job

Thanks to changes in retirement laws in England, researchers have been able to develop a clear picture of the effects of working longer.

Increasing retirement age helped women's memory and health

Before 2010, women in England could retire and receive their state pension at age 60. Between 2010 and 2018, however, the female retirement age in England gradually increased to 65. As a result, about 1 in 10 women stayed in paid work for longer. Researchers realized that this policy change created a real-world laboratory to study the effects of paid work on women. They shared their findings in the journal Labour Economics.

Researchers discovered that "women who continue to work beyond age 60 have, on average, significantly better cognition and fewer signs of physical disability than had they retired at 60."

For example, working women aged 60 to 63 performed better on memory tests, recollecting 1.5 more words in a delayed recall cognition test. That may not sound like much, but it is similar to the gap between the richest and poorest women on the test. The longer-working women also showed small improvements on the immediate recall test, and verbal fluency increased by an average of six words per minute — a significant change, as the average fluency before the policy change was 23 words per minute.

Women enjoyed better memory regardless of their profession.

These positive effects were seen across workers in all professions, whether the women held white-collar or blue-collar jobs. But the most significant improvements were seen among single working women.

Women who continued working in sedentary jobs had worse physical health.

Women who worked additional years in physically demanding jobs experienced a health boost, increasing their average walking speed from 1 meter per second to 1.2 meters per second. However, women who worked additional years in sedentary jobs experienced a decline in their health; they physically slowed down, with an average walking speed of 0.3 meters per second less than at the beginning of the study.

With mental health and, in some cases, physical fitness improving due to delayed retirement, women and policymakers may want to consider health consequences when determining the optimal retirement age.

"Taken together, these results suggest that there are, on average, some health benefits of extending working lives, in addition to the increased earnings that such work brings. Such positive spillovers should be factored into policy analysis of changing retirement incentives," the researchers stated.

Furthermore, although this study focused on women due to the available data resulting from the pension reforms, there is little reason to suspect that the results wouldn't be relevant for both genders.

Why does working have such a big impact on mental and physical health?

Researchers stressed that since these changes occurred as a result of rules that delayed retirement by a small amount of time, it's likely that cognition and physical abilities can deteriorate quickly upon leaving work.

The reasons for this are simple: Leaving work changes both levels of physical and social activity.

Single women likely experienced the most significant cognitive benefits of continued work because they tend to live alone when they're older. By working longer, they benefit from social interactions at work. Likewise, those in physically demanding jobs must continue to move their bodies on the job, but if they retire earlier, there is no one pushing them to exercise.

For women who don't want to work longer, these results suggest that a proactive effort to increase exercise and maintain regular social connections will be essential to combat physical and mental decline. And for those on the fence about when to quit their jobs, the health benefits of staying may combine with the financial ones to convince you to delay giving notice.

Christy Bieber is an experienced personal finance and legal writer who has been writing since 2008. She has been published by Forbes, CNN, WSJ Buyside, Motley Fool, and many other online sites. She has a JD from UCLA and a degree in English, Media, and Communications from the University of Rochester.