Don’t quit your day job

If you’re feeling lonely, experts recommend you continue working past retirement age.

The suggestion comes from British Prime Minister David Cameron who claims “loneliness in seniors is more deadly than smoking”.

Prime Minister Cameron expresses his interest in Norwegian law that automatically raises the pension age in line with predictions of life expectancy and allows flexibility over when workers should retire.

“I was very interested in the Norwegian retirement system, where you’ve created a process rather than a cliff edge. I love the idea about the life-expectancy adjustment,” he explains.

David Halpern, director of the British government’s Behavioural Insights Team, echoed Prime Minister Cameron’s thoughts at the conference in Stockholm last week, claiming the benefits of work among older people is not all about the money.

“Work matters, particularly for older people, not just for money, but for social contact. If you’ve got someone who loves you, someone you can talk to if you’ve got a problem that is a more powerful predictor of whether you’ll be alive in 10 years’ time, more than almost any other factor,” Mr Halpern says.

The conference, attended by Prime Minister Cameron and Mr Halpern, included the gathering of northern European countries to discuss how to keep older people in the workforce.

Mr Halpern also believes older people should be encouraged to leave homes that have become too big for them in order to help ease the UK’s housing shortage.

“We do have enough houses, it’s just essentially they are lived in by older people,” he says.