Study by age researchers - Rich people enjoy their old age nine years longer than poor people
Researchers have revealed the secret to a long and healthy life. The solution is quite simple: "Be wealthy and you will live ten years longer." That sounds like a bad joke. But it has long been known that wealth and lifespan correlate. The Robert Koch Institute sees a direct link between illness and income. Poorer people are more frequently affected by illnesses such as heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and chronic lung diseases. The rich can enjoy a long old age. Poor people, on the other hand, fall into old age early.
Long-term study
A study published in the "Journal of Gerontology" provides reliable data on this assumption. The data comes from the USA and the UK and is likely to be transferable to Germany, as the researchers were unable to identify any significant differences between the two countries. This finding alone is surprising, as the healthcare system in the USA is largely based on patients' income, while the British have a public healthcare system that is open to every citizen. Data from 10,754 and 14,803 adults aged 50 were analyzed for the study. The British took part in the Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), while the US citizens took part in the American Health and Retirement Study (HRS). The data was collected from 2002 onwards and tracked over a period of ten years.
Complaint-free life
The researchers did not examine the remaining total life expectancy, but rather the time that 50-year-olds had left to live a life free of complaints. They therefore examined cohorts born before 1952. Dr. Paola Zaninotto, the lead author of the study, said: "While life expectancy is a useful indicator of health, quality of life in old age is also crucial. By measuring healthy life expectancy, we can estimate the number of years of life spent in a favorable state of health or without disability."
Several external factors influence symptom-free life expectancy, but the dominant factor is wealth. It was measured on the basis of total net wealth. Comparisons were then made between the wealthiest and least wealthy third. The comparison groups are very large at 33. This means that small groups of extremely rich and extremely poor people were not compared.
Nine years difference
The richest men at the age of 50 can therefore expect to live for around 31 "healthy" years. You could say that, statistically speaking, they can enjoy a carefree life until 81. For poor men, it is only around 22 years, which corresponds to an age of 72. The pattern is the same for women, except that their "health expectancy" for both groups is slightly longer than that of men. They are 83 and 74 years respectively. This is also an astonishing finding, as the "health expectancy" of women is hardly higher than that of men. And in the years before 1952, it was still quite common for women to work significantly less and smoke and drink less than men. In Germany, the total life expectancy of these cohorts is around four to five years apart.
As only people with at least 50 years of life were included in the study, only insights into the lives of older people were obtained. Earlier deaths are excluded and therefore leveled out between the groups. As it can be assumed that the risk of early death under 50 is also higher among the poorer than among the wealthier, their life expectancy is likely to be even lower than that of the rich.
Bundle of causes
A wide variety of factors are possible causes for the differences. The classic explanations include the proportion of hard physical labor and poorer medical care. However, it is also assumed that lifestyles and habits have a major influence - in other words, the rich and poor differ in terms of healthy eating, physical activity, tobacco and alcohol consumption. If you apply the results of the study to the German pension system, you can see how politically explosive it is. If a man retires at the age of 65, he will have an average of only seven years of retirement without any complaints, whereas a rich man can expect 16 good years. That is more than double.
Source: Journal of GerontologyReadalso:
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- The long-term study, conducted by researchers in the USA and Great Britain, was published in the "Journal of Gerontology" and suggests that the healthcare system's financial basis does not significantly impact the correlation between wealth and longevity, as previously believed.
- The study analyzed data from 10,754 British participants in the Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and 14,803 American participants in the American Health and Retirement Study (HRS), spanning a decade from 2002 onwards.
- The researchers found that men in the wealthiest third of the population at the age of 50 can expect to live around 31 years without health issues, while their counterparts in the least wealthy third can only expect about 22 years, a significant difference of nine years.
- The findings indicate that the wealth disparity has a significant impact on the quality of life and health expectancy in both men and women, with wealthy individuals in Great Britain and the USA enjoying a longer symptom-free life compared to their less affluent counterparts.
Source: www.stern.de
