“The within-family association provides strong evidence that an association between wealth accumulation and life expectancy exists because comparing siblings within the same family to each other controls for all of the life experience and biology that they share,” said Eric Finegood, a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.
‘People with a higher net worth could have a longer life. Policies that promote financial securities at the individual level are required from a public health perspective.’
As health conditions could impair an individual’s ability to acquire wealth due to activity limitations or healthcare costs, they re-analyzed the data by concentrating only on the individuals without any history of cancer or heart disease.
In this analysis also, the within-family association between wealth and longevity remained the same.
While the results suggest a possible link between midlife wealthiness and longevity, the authors note that many American families live paycheck to paycheck with little to no financial savings.
“Our results suggest that building wealth is important for health at the individual level, even after accounting for where one starts out in life. So, from a public health perspective, policies that support and protect individuals’ ability to achieve financial security are needed”, explained senior study author Greg Miller.
The findings of this study were published in the journal JAMA Health Forum .
Source: Medindia
