A public health approach on health and retirement: what do we know about their relationship?

• Autor(a) principal: Uva, Mafalda Sousa
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Fonseca, António Manuel, Nunes, Baltazar, Dias, Carlos Matias
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/22401
• topic: Retirement; Chronic diseases; Self-perceived health; Public health; Portugal; Reforma; Doenças crónicas; Saúde percebida; Saúde pública; Portugal

The exit from active life and the ingress into a life stage in which labour activities andrelations do not exist, or could be of a different nature, is a feature of retirement.Several studies have investigated the effects of changes in health upon retirement. Severalothers have investigated the effects of retirement on health. If retirement is responsible foraffecting health, then the implementation of public health policies, aimed at improving olderindividual’s health, should take this matter into account. Similarly, the implementation ofpolitical changes in retirement age such as those that we are witnessing in Portugal shouldbe carefully planned.The aim of this work is to describe and discuss the international and national studiesconducted to improve the understanding of the relationship between health and retirement,especially between chronic diseases (and self-perceived health) and retirement, and also tohighlight the importance of studying this subject from a public health point of view inPortugal.Regarding the effects of health on retirement, self-perceived health seems to have a rel-evant effect on retirement, as well as chronic diseases, although there is less agreement inthe latter case. Findings on the impact of retirement in health are not consensual and it isthought that the nature of the analysis (cross-sectional or longitudinal), the timing and thereason for retirement, the circumstances of an individual before and after retirement andthe health measure under research could be primarily responsible for the lack of consistencyamong studies.Concerning the Portuguese population, the few studies found about health and retire-ment are focused in different health status indicators, making it difficult to reach a general conclusion. Thus the need remains for the establishment of more methodologically valid research studies in Portugal, mainly epidemiologic studies involving the quantification of association and impact measures.