When Working Gets Harder With Age

Our physical, mental, and emotional abilities change as we get older, and this can affect the kind of work we do. The National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) asks people if they’ve run into such limitations. The chart below shows the shift by age, based on the 2023 sample.

Difficulties increase steadily over the years, but if we’re lucky enough to reach our 80s, there appears to be a steeper drop.

When Working Gets Difficult

Among adults, there appears to be a turn in the 40s. A steep drop for those 85 and older.

While it’s not the same for everyone, you can see the lines start to shift around the 40s towards more work limitations.

The exact question from the survey is: “Are you limited in the kind or amount of work you can do because of a physical, mental or emotional problem?” Only a fraction of a percentage of people did not answer, so I’m not sure how to interpret the answers from retired folks. Mainly, I’m curious if the percentage of people who reported limitations would be higher if everyone was still working.

Note the big shift for 85 and older that the line does not totally show but you can see in the dots.

The NHIS also asks about difficulty running errands. Levels are shown by age below.

When Errands Get Difficult

Among adults, there is a slow decline starting in their 60s that speeds up in their 70s.

I expected an earlier shift downwards for “no difficulty” but then again, anecdotally, it seems to make sense. Maybe the errands don’t get more difficult. They just take a little longer. Then when (or if) we reach 85 or older, things tend to get more difficult.

Most comforting is the ability to participate in social activities doesn’t change much, as shown below.

When Socializing Gets Difficult

Most people can still participate in social activities.

This includes visiting friends, attending clubs and meetings, and going to parties. There’s a drop at the end, but that seems right and still over half of people report no difficulty.

See also: when your vision and hearing decline. Same dataset. Steeper drops.

Notes

The estimates are based on 29,522 responses to the NHIS from 2023. I analyzed and prepared the data in R. I made the charts with D3.js.