Working at the age of 65–75 years and incident dementia in Europe: A 15-year follow-up study

Abstract Background Political efforts are made to extend working careers but it is not clear what health consequences working at retirement age may have. Cognitive decline and dementia are major public health concerns, and the aim is to explore if working at retirement age is associated with incident dementia. Methods Data come from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) which is a population-based panel study across Europe. Dementia was reported for the first time in wave 2 in 2006-2007, which was selected as baseline (14 countries included). We identified 7,523 individuals aged 65-75 years who did not report dementia/Alzheimer's Disease in wave 2 and who participated in at least one later wave between waves 4 (2011-2012) and 9 (2021-2022). Of these, 919 individuals were working at least to some extent (were either employed or had worked within the past four weeks) at baseline. Binary logistic regression models were used in the analyses where incident reported dementia was the outcome. In Model (M) 1, working at age 65-75 years was adjusted for age, sex and education. In M2, M1 was further adjusted for cognitive functioning, physical functioning, depressive symptoms, hypertension, high cholesterol and smoking. Results Of those who worked at age 65-75 years, 4.0 % had incident dementia whereas 9.4 % of those who did not work had incident dementia. In M1, working at age 65-75 years protected from incident dementia (Odds ratio [OR] 0.47, 95 % Confidence Interval [CI] 0.22-0.99). However, in M2 the findings were no longer statistically significant (OR 0.28, 95 % CI 0.04-2.22). Conclusions Working at retirement age may protect from dementia but further studies with more statistical power are required. From cognitive health perspective, the findings give support for prolonging working careers among retirement aged individuals who are able to work. Key messages • Continuing to work past retirement age may reduce dementia risk but further studies are needed. • From public policies perspective, pursuing longer work careers appears to be safe in terms of cognitive health.