Membership of social/community groups after retirement linked to longer life

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-02/b-mos021116.php

Public Release: 15-Feb-2016
Membership of social/community groups after retirement linked to longer life
Health and wellbeing benefits equal to those of regular exercise, findings suggest
BMJ

Membership of social groups, such as book clubs or church groups, after retirement is linked to a longer life, with the impact on health and wellbeing similar to that of regular exercise, suggests research published in the online journal BMJ Open.

The more groups an individual belongs to in the first few years after s/he stops working, the lower their risk of death, the findings show.

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The results showed that individuals whose quality of life was good before retirement were more likely to score highly on quality of life assessment after retirement.

But membership of social groups was also associated with quality of life. Compared with those still working, every group membership lost after retirement was associated with around a 10% drop in quality of life score six years later.

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Subjectively rated health was not a significant predictor of death, but the number of group memberships was.

If a person belonged to two groups before retirement, and kept these up over the following six years, their risk of death was 2%, rising to 5% if they gave up membership of one, and to 12% if they gave up membership of both.

No such patterns were seen for those still in formal employment.

The researchers separately assessed whether changes in physical activity levels affected risk of death and compared this with the magnitude of the effect of social group membership.

They found that if a person exercised vigorously once a week before retirement, and kept up this frequency afterwards, their chance of dying over the next six years was 3%, rising to 6% if they reduced the frequency to less than once a week, and to 11% if they stopped altogether.

Among those who were still working, the equivalent figures were 3%, 5%, and 8%.

"Accordingly, we can see that the effects of physical activity on health were comparable to those associated with maintaining old group memberships and developing new ones," write the researchers.

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