Kean Researcher Studies How Workplace Technology Shapes Cognitive Aging
As technology continues to reshape the workplace, older employees may experience its effects in very different ways. New digital tools can provide opportunities to learn and stay mentally engaged, while rapidly changing job demands may make it more difficult for some workers to remain employed.
Kean University Assistant Professor Eli Kochersperger, Ph.D., is studying how those experiences may influence retirement decisions and cognitive aging through a new two-year research project supported by a $50,000 award from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
His project, Technological Change, Retirement Incentives, and Cognitive Aging, will examine whether technology-intensive work helps older employees maintain cognitive engagement and develop new skills, as well as whether difficulties adapting to new technology may contribute to earlier retirement.
“I’m interested in looking at this margin of the differential effects of technology adoption and ultimately seeing how this translates to things like cognitive aging,” Kochersperger said.
The award comes through NBER’s Early Career Research Awards for the Study of the Economics of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias program and runs through August 2028. Kochersperger was one of five researchers to receive an award through the program this year.
Kochersperger will use the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative survey of older Americans, to examine information on cognition, retirement, health, employment and wealth alongside measures of workplace technology use and digital job demands.
The research will also explore whether retirement affects cognitive aging differently depending on the type of work a person leaves behind. Changes in Social Security eligibility rules will help Kochersperger distinguish the effects of retirement from other factors that may influence when someone leaves the workforce.
The project builds on Kochersperger’s broader research on technology and aging, including a previous paper currently under peer review, Digitization and the Limits of Productivity Growth in Aging Industries, which he completed with other Kean faculty members.
The new study gives him an opportunity to examine those questions at the individual level while expanding his research into the economics of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
“This is an opportunity to learn how to continue writing competitive grant proposals, getting larger grants, and trying to come up with ways of pushing the envelope a little bit more and pursuing more cutting-edge research,” he said.
The award will also support research assistance and Kochersperger’s participation in NBER aging and health research activities.
His findings could offer new insight into how workplace technology and retirement decisions influence cognitive health later in life, with potential implications for worker retraining, age-inclusive technology practices and retirement policy.
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