While many Americans face working longer and delaying retirement, it might seem an intuitive next step to assume that chronic disease could become more prevalent in the workplace.

But researchers in a new study published in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease this week found the opposite might be the case.

“Employed older adults had better health outcomes than unemployed older adults. Physically demanding occupations had the lowest risk of poor health outcomes, suggesting a stronger healthy worker effect,” the study authors wrote.

As Alberto Caban-Martinez, an epidemiologist at the University of Miami, put in in an interview with NPR, “there’s something about the aging process — that if you stay working, then you stay hardy.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 22 percent of the U.S. workforce will be composed of adults age 65 or older by 2022. Previous studies on the health of older workers had limitations, these study authors wrote, leading them in their study to “characterize 4 major health status measures of older US workers and nonworkers using a representative sample of the US population and controlling for potential sociodemographic and health behavior confounders such as education, race/ethnicity, sex, age, smoking status, alcohol consumption, obesity, and marital status.”

Read the article “Adults Who Keep Working Past Retirement Age Stronger, Healthier” on theblaze.com.