Can Money Buy a Longer Life? Yes – to a Point
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Here's your money briefing for Thursday, January 9th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. Saving money can boost the size of your nest egg and make you feel better about the future. But what about living a longer life?
The things that help people live longer are pretty well established. Eat better, sleep more, exercise more, spend time with friends. So you can make improvements on those fronts without ever spending a dime, but you can also spend in a smart way to level up on each of those.
Reporter Joe Pinsker covers the pursuit of happiness for the WSJ's personal finance team.
How does wealth relate to life expectancy according to recent research?
He'll join us after the break.
Listen at schwab.com slash washingtonwise.
As the saying goes, the rich get richer, but many of them live longer lives. Wall Street Journal reporter Joe Pinsker looked into the research behind that, and he joins me. Joe, according to research you cited that was published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, once Americans make it to their late 50s, the wealthiest 10% live to a median age of around 86 years. That's roughly 14 years longer than the least wealthy 10%. Why do wealthy people tend to live longer?
A simple way to say it is that money buys a lot of stuff that helps you live longer. Healthcare is a big one, of course, buying healthy food, maybe a gym membership. But it's also important to recognize how not everything about the relationship between money and longevity has to do with individual level spending decisions. Neighborhoods with richer residents tend to have less violence and less pollution plus better parks and schools. So it's partially about what money buys and it's partially about your communities and surroundings that a certain amount of money unlocks.
But is it only money that can extend someone's longevity?
What specific lifespan gap did the JAMA Internal Medicine study find between rich and poor?
It's really about how to use money in a strategic way. The things that help people live longer are pretty well established, and they're not entirely shocking. Eat better, sleep more, exercise more, spend time with friends. So you can make improvements on those fronts without ever spending a dime, but you can also spend in a smart way to level up on each of those.
Now, what's the correlation between money and longevity as people age?
Why do wealthier people tend to live longer beyond just personal spending?
It is the case that a higher income and a higher net worth is correlated with living longer. But when you look at something like income, you can see that there are kind of diminishing returns here. On average, somebody with a household income of $14,000 would live about 10 fewer months than someone making $20,000. And that same 10-month gap exists at a higher level of income between incomes of roughly $160,000 and $225,000 and $225,000 and $1.95 million. So that was a lot of numbers. But basically, the 10-month gap in lifespan, it starts to require sort of more and more money the more money you make. Those numbers come from a 2016 study that used 2012 inflation-adjusted dollars, but that can give you a sense of the scale of the diminishing returns here.
Now, for those of us who aren't ultra-wealthy or have a high net worth, what could we spend on to add extra years to our lives?
The more obvious ways to think about this are to buy things that will help you live a healthier life, like a gym membership or maybe blackout curtains that help you sleep better. But there were some really great sort of advanced pieces of advice that I got when I was interviewing experts on aging for my story. And one piece of advice that I really loved was to try to target your spending to things that kind of tick multiple boxes in terms of health benefits. And One example here that I really adored was a gerontologist at Cornell University said that she often recommends that people in older age take up the activity of ballroom dancing because it comes with benefits on multiple tiers. You have the physical benefits of moving around and dancing.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:54
2
How does wealth relate to life expectancy according to recent research?
0:54–2:53
3
What specific lifespan gap did the JAMA Internal Medicine study find between rich and poor?
2:53–3:18
4
Why do wealthier people tend to live longer beyond just personal spending?
3:18–5:28
5
Where do diminishing returns on income and longevity appear as people earn more?
5:28–8:52
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from WSJ Your Money Briefing
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