This just in: a new study commissioned by National Public Radio, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health has discovered that for “one in four retirees,” life after retirement is worse than the 5 years before retirement. There’s a lot more to the study, but that’s the rather breathless result that leads the joint press release.

 

So 25 percent. Which is, as the research notes, a “substantial minority.” Which is a lot of people to be saying that life isn’t as good as it used to be. But if we look at the data, we see that 18 percent of the retirees in the study were over 80, when, let’s be clear here, bodies start to fall apart faster than a 10-year-old British sports car. So if many of this group say life isn’t so sweet, it doesn’t seem like a shocking result. It probably means some retirees between 50 and 80 find themselves plagued by health or financial issues. And quite a few people after age 80 have these problems.

 

The more surprising result is that 73 percent of the retirees say life in retirement is better than or the same as it was during the 5 years before they retired. (More precisely, 29 percent say life is better and 44 percent say it’s about the same.)

 

Let’s not minimize the trials, the suffering, the demise that comes with age. But really, you expect that, don’t you? You know how this plays out, right? So the fact that three-quarters of the people are healthy and wealthy enough to say life is as good as before, or better, strikes us as awesome.

 

Here’s an idea: we think the next NPR/RWJF/HSPH  study should look at how many people between, say, 20 and 40 think life is better or worse than some five-year period in the past. Or between 30 and 50. There’s always going to be a “substantial minority” that thinks life is getting suckier. Old people can certainly make a better case for feeling that way because, you know, looming death and all. We’d just like to parse out the constant complainers and figure out how much worse old age is than the rest of life.

 

Actually, never mind.

 

Photo of “Sailor’s Snug Harbor” from the Library of Congress