No need for mandatory retirement

RETIREMENT age should not be mandatory, according to a US expert on ageing and economics who was in Dublin for the launch of part of a new long-term study on ageing in Ireland.

Dr Richard Suzman from the National Institute on Aging in the US said it was his personal view that people should themselves decide when they needed to retire.

“People’s cognition and physical function look like they have been improving overall, there’s lots of variability. We have given five-year grants to people aged 82 and they produce much more than people aged 30,” he said.

“And I think mandatory retirement age is a relic. I think it requires evaluation in academia which would be tough, but I think should be an individual decision and not a social decision.”

His own advice on healthy ageing includes ensuring high levels of education, choosing your country carefully and watching your lifestyle.

“There is some debate about how much obesity these days affects longevity, but it is certainly a major determinant of disability. And smoking is without doubt the worst thing you can do, but if there is a magic bullet in longevity it is probably exercise. Some initial studies show exercise is important for maintaining cognition and that is one of the big issues in ageing.”

He added that the new long-term study of ageing in Ireland would boost international efforts to protect health into older age.

Dr Suzman was in Dublin last week to mark the launch of the national pilot in The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), a €29-million initiative to examine health, social and economic factors among 8,000 people as they get older in Ireland.

“The increase in life expectancy is really one of the crowning achievements of the last century but it’s also one of the biggest challenges facing the world, perhaps almost on a par with global warming, it’s happening slowly, we can prepare for it to a certain extent,” he told The Irish Times ahead of a lecture at Trinity College Dublin last week.

“We have found there’s an enormous value in being able to compare experiences across different countries to get a better understanding of how different policies and practices are going to affect ageing. Because there’s enormous variation in how well people age within countries and across countries.”

Dr Suzman, who helped set up the Health and Retirement Study in the US 17 years ago, described TILDA as a “new star” in the firmament alongside other longitudinal studies on ageing in the US, England and across Europe.

“TILDA, from my perspective, is very forward-looking,” he said.

“And increasingly we are seeing a network of researchers – the problems of ageing are really too big for a single country, even in one with the resources of the US there aren’t enough funds and there aren’t enough smart, dedicated researchers to handle this, so we need collaboration.”

Launching the national pilot phase of TILDA in TCD, President Mary McAleese said the 10-year initiative would put ageing in Ireland “beyond the sphere of anecdote and myth”.

“There are answers there just waiting for someone to ask,” she said of the study, which is to be funded by Atlantic Philanthropies, Irish Life and the Department of Health and Children.