Does Work Matter? Post-Retirement Survival of United Kingdom Postal Workers, 1860–1909

Abstract

This article considers the impact of occupation on mortality using a dataset of over 9,000 male postal workers who can be traced from retirement to death. For each worker, we know their demographic characteristics, occupation, location, and cause of retirement. The article uses these data to model the impact of postal work on survival post-retirement, showing that type of occupation and cause of retirement had significant effects on survival for those pensioners who retired for medical reasons. Different occupations were exposed to varying risks, which led to occupationally distinct patterns of medical causes of retirement. These differing causes of retirement, in turn, led to different survival chances after a worker retired. The article demonstrates how a long-term view can improve our understanding of adult mortality in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.