On the verge of retirement? How you hang it up — and what you do after that — could, in part, affect whether your golden years seem more like restive alpenglow or a fleeting sunset.

Confusing the issue, there’s evidence that quitting work can lead to a decline in health, while there’s also research that finds, to the contrary, that retiring may be more likely to improve a person’s well-being in the long run.

The decision about when or whether to stay in the workplace is a highly personal one, says David Lee, professor of public health at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. “There are some advantages to being in the workforce, like social engagement, that one loses when they go into retirement,” he says. Conversely, many people are well-networked outside of their job. “Some people are quite successful at retirement, and I think those individuals tend to have more outside interests and activities that carry them through their working years,” Lee says.

[See: Easy Ways to Protect Your Aging Brain.]

To be sure, many people do keep working despite significant stress not because they love their job, but because they can’t afford to retire, and many others quit working due to declining health. In either of those common scenarios, experts say, it’s less likely that staying or going will have a positive impact on overall wellness.

“One of the challenges of assessing whether retirement improves or worsens health is that oftentimes retirements are induced by health shocks. So you could imagine someone working in their 50s and they either get sick or have an injury at work,” says Aspen Gorry, assistant professor of economics and finance at Utah State University, who co-wrote a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper published last year evaluating whether retirement improves health and life satisfaction. From chronic conditions to disability, health issues can lead a person to retire and cloud research seeking to determine if retiring has a positive or negative impact on health.

But for those who have more leeway in deciding on retirement — such as people who are able to choose to time it around when they start taking Social Security or an employer-sponsored pension — there may be a health bump after all. “We find strong evidence that retirement improves both health and life satisfaction,” concluded Gorry and his fellow researchers at Utah State University and George Mason University in the NBER paper, after considering that type of scenario and looking at survey data from the long-running Health and Retirement Study. The ongoing longitudinal study started in 1992 has surveyed about 40,000 people 50 and older, including spouses of respondents; the data gathered has been used in more than 2,000 published papers on topics ranging from the cost of caring for people with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia to financial preparation for retirement.

Controlling for age-related trends, the researchers who produced the NBER paper found in drawing from the Health and Retirement Study data that people who had retired, over the long run, reported less difficulty with walking across a room or several blocks or climbing stairs — among other measures of mobility limitations. They also reported fewer so-called large muscle limitations in responding, for example, to whether they had difficulty with sitting for two hours, getting up from a chair, stooping, kneeling or crouching, and pushing or pulling large objects, Gorry noted. That was in addition to responding more favorably to questions gauging life satisfaction.

[See: 11 Things Seniors Should Look for in a Health Provider.]

Those looking ahead to retirement should envision what that’s going to look like day-to-day — from how the time will be spent to one’s social support structure and lifestyle. “What’s important for health as people get older and leave the workforce is remaining — or becoming, sometimes — physically active,” says David Weir, director of the Health and Retirement Study. “What you don’t want to do is retire to the Barcalounger — that’s counterproductive,” Lee adds.

“The second thing, which I don’t think gets enough attention, is having a sense of purpose in your life. That, for many people, comes from their work,” Weir says. “But for many people it doesn’t require work. Caring for people, doing volunteer work — many, many things can give people that sense of purpose. But what we see is that [for] people who don’t seem to feel that sense of purpose — that doesn’t bode as well for their health.”

Of course, financial planning remains pivotal to a successful retirement, experts say, including determining how much you’ll want and need to live on; that’s particularly important in the context of health given the high cost of care — even with Medicare coverage — and the impact of not being able to pay for treatment and medicines, as well as the added stress of financial pressures.

The data doesn’t indicate, however, that one model of retirement is better for wellness than another — such as traditional retirement, or not working at all, continuing part-time work or gradually decreasing hours. “Whether to retire all at once or do it gradually — I wouldn’t say that’s been shown to have strong differences in terms of long-term health outcomes,” Weir says. More important, experts say, is to fit the mode of retirement to one’s individual interests and preferences.

[See: The 10 Best Exercises You Can Do for the Rest of Your Life.]

“Speaking for myself … I see real value in maintaining some level of employment into my retirement years. I’m 56 right now, and the type of work I do is intellectually stimulating and rewarding,” Lee says. “I think it’s valuable for one’s physical health and mental health as well.” But, he emphasizes, that doesn’t mean everyone would benefit from a golden years working arrangement. “For someone who is engaged in work that is not gratifying — and [who] can afford to retire — I would say there’s a less compelling argument in that case.”

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What?s the Healthiest Way to Retire? originally appeared on usnews.com