Vanke School of Public Health, Tsinghua University, Haidian District, Beijing, China.
Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2022 Apr 1;77(4):750-758. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbab204.
Bridge employment has been encouraged by many countries worldwide as societies age rapidly. However, the health impact on bridge employment is not consistent in previous studies. This study aims to explore the association between bridge employment and long-term health outcome among the Chinese population.
In this prospective cohort study, we used a subset of the China Kadoorie Biobank study, in which 163,619 participants who reached the statutory age of retirement at baseline (2004-2008) were included in this study. Mortality statistics were obtained from death registries in the Death Surveillance Points system annually. We used a Cox proportional hazard model to analyze the association between bridge employment and all-cause mortality.
Overall, we found that compared to retired/nonemployed men and women, hazards of all-cause mortality were lower in older people with bridge employment (men: 0.82, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.77-0.88; women: 0.79, 95% CI: 0.74-0.94) in healthy populations. The protective effect of bridge employment was stronger among older adults living in rural areas and among those from a relatively low socioeconomic status.
The lower risk of all-cause mortality associated with bridge employment was consistently observed among older men and women. Our findings may provide important insights from the health dimension on the retirement policy-making in China as a hyper-aging society.
随着社会的快速老龄化，许多国家都鼓励兼职工作。然而，之前的研究中对兼职工作的健康影响并不一致。本研究旨在探讨中国人群中兼职工作与长期健康结果之间的关系。
在这项前瞻性队列研究中，我们使用了中国慢性病前瞻性研究的一个子数据集，其中包括 163619 名在基线（2004-2008 年）达到法定退休年龄的参与者。死亡率统计数据每年从死亡监测点系统中的死亡登记处获得。我们使用 Cox 比例风险模型分析兼职工作与全因死亡率之间的关联。
总的来说，我们发现与退休/非就业的男性和女性相比，健康人群中从事兼职工作的老年人全因死亡率较低（男性：0.82，95%置信区间[CI]：0.77-0.88；女性：0.79，95%CI：0.74-0.94）。在农村地区和社会经济地位相对较低的老年人中，兼职工作的保护作用更强。
在老年男性和女性中，与兼职工作相关的全因死亡率风险较低的情况一直存在。我们的研究结果可能从健康角度为中国这个老龄化超级大国的退休政策制定提供重要见解。
