The secret to happy retirement

People should give up seeking success and status if they want to be happy after they retire, suggests a new study reported by ABC online.

A study by Andrew Burr and colleagues from Concordia University in Canada, reported their findings in the latest edition of the Journal of Happiness Studies.

The researchers studied 371 recently-retired adults over a period of three years. After controlling for financial and health factors, they found that the retirees’ life values were good predictors of their well-being.

While previous studies have found that seeking success and status can make younger adults happier, the Canadian research showed that similar desires are likely to make retirees less happy.

To explain this data, the authors suggest that success and status ambitions are more likely to be frustrated after retirement due to the “limited availability of such opportunities outside the hierarchies and rewards of the workplace”.

Mr Burr and colleagues found other evidence that attitudes associated with decreased happiness in younger adults are the secret to happiness later in life.

While other studies have found that focussing on conformity to social norms and upholding tradition can be detrimental to the well-being of younger adults, this study found them to be beneficial to retirees.

The authors suggest that although focussing on tradition and social conformity causes “guilt-proneness” in younger adults, it may be associated with “social connectedness, purpose, and meaning” in older adults.

“Emphasis on conformity to social norms, upholding tradition and customs … while potentially detrimental for younger adults, appears beneficial for retired adults,” they say.

Mr Burr and colleagues say these findings suggest people may need to radically change their values in order to maintain happiness after retirement.

“[Retirement] may be a time when the project of building for one’s personal future becomes less important for well-being compared to an emotionally meaningful present,” they say.

Dr Caroline West, a senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sydney, who is writing a book about happiness, says that these results fill an important gap in the literature.

“Often we get blanket statements about what will and will not cause happiness,” says Dr West.

“But what we need are more fine grained studies. Ultimately, people want to know how they can improve their well-being. Data about what makes young adults happy is not automatically going to be relevant to people of retirement age.”

But Dr West has doubts about the feasibility of using this research to achieve greater happiness.

“These kinds of values may be a very deep-seated part of people’s psychology and it’s not clear that you could change them even if you wanted to,” she says.