
For life expectancy, money matters - jonbaer
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/04/for-life-expectancy-money-matters/
======
AndrewKemendo
My go-to story whenever anyone says "money can't buy happiness" is this:

A good friend of mine was diagnosed with Liver Cancer around the same time as
Steve Jobs. Both lived near SF, and both were put on the waiting list for
transplants around the same time (+- 2 months). She was young, very sick and
otherwise healthy so was a good candidate to be high on the list.

Then I heard about Steve "moving" to Tennessee [1] to get on a different,
shorter transplant list - and thus receiving the transplant needed. She died
shortly after, never receiving a transplant, while Jobs lived two more years.

This is not a complaint or gripe about fairness, but just a demonstration of
how two very different people in a very similar predicament had massively
different outcomes based almost entirely on wealth, fame and power. Money buys
access, which create options, which enable health, freedom and longevity. It's
so simple and obvious I don't know how people can argue otherwise.

[1] [http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/southern-transplants-
ho...](http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/southern-transplants-how-apple-
ceo-steve-jobs-got-the-liver-he-needed-in-memphis-ep-307208860-329010091.html)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od6Nq_bN_XY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od6Nq_bN_XY)

~~~
jazzyk
Money is necessary to have a certain quality of life (quality healthcare,
etc), but is certainly _not_ sufficient to achieve happiness.

~~~
nibs
I agree most with this way of thinking. Money is downside protection but the
upside benefit happiness wise is minimal. I think relationships, meaningful
work, healthy diet and exercise, sleeping well, sense of community, etc.
matter more for upside happiness.

~~~
afarrell
It is far easier to have a healthy diet if you can afford:

\- fridge space for fresh ingredients that you don't have to split with
roommates

\- An apartment a short distance to a grocer

\- pantry space for cooking tools and dry ingredients that you don't have to
split with roommates

\- the cooking tools themselves

\- the time and mental energy to teach yourself a new skill

\- money to spend on take-out when you mess up a recipe

~~~
e40
Add to the above

\- live near where you work

Think of all the people that commute 2+ hours in the Bay Area and the stress
that goes along with that.

------
chatwinra
For me, this is the most important aspect of this paper:

"People say, ‘Americans are living longer, so we ought to delay the age of
retirement,’ but … it’s a little bit unfair to say to low-income people that
they’re going to get Social Security and Medicare for fewer years because
investment bankers are living longer.”"

As the divide between the rich and poor keeps growing [1], we need to start
doing something about it in all areas, and this seems like a really important
finding for that.

[1][http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/employment/in-it-together-
why-l...](http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/employment/in-it-together-why-less-
inequality-benefits-all_9789264235120-en)

~~~
gadders
I'm not 100% against raising the retirement age, but it would be a lot easier
on me to work until I'm 70 than, say, a garbage collector or builder.

~~~
jazzyk
While office work is less demanding in certain aspects, it _can_ be quite
destructive in other ways, if you are not careful:

\- circulatory issues (hypertension, due to lack of exercise),

\- obesity,

\- back issues,

\- repetitive stress injuries, etc.

All of these could keep you from working.

Exercise and proper diet are key, regardless of your social status. The
problem is that lower-status people usually don;t have the knowledge or don't
care.

~~~
akavi
> The problem is that lower-status people usually don;t have the knowledge or
> don't care.

Or, just maybe, don't have the money or the free time.

~~~
jazzyk
Let's not introduce victim mentality here.

\- gym memberships start from $10/month (optional, there are plenty of body-
weight exercises you can do outside of gym).

\- running costs nothing (in recurring fees).

\- all you need is 1 hr/day, 3-4 times a week.

It is all _really_ about knowledge and motivation.

I am not saying it is easy, but it has nothing to do with money.

~~~
massysett
1 hr/day, 3-4 times a week can be an enormous amount of time, especially when
you are juggling children, work, and commuting. Higher income people can
manage this more easily--often their work hours are more flexible, and the
very high income can staff out their child care.

And lower income people are more likely to have jobs that require physical
activity to begin with. Exercising is a lot harder if you've already been on
your feet all day.

So it is not all about knowledge and motivation and while it may have little
to do with money, it has a lot to do with available time.

~~~
jazzyk
It really varies. Most people I know in blue collar jobs work 40 hours/week
and are free to do what they want after 5pm. They don't take their work home.
It is usually the "exempt" professionals - lawyers, doctors, McKinsey
consultants who work overtime (because they have to or they _think_ they have
to).

------
lionsgate
One can wonder how much comes down to poorer people eating junk food, smoking
and alcohol abuse.

I've never been that well of, but at the same time I've never afforded to
smoke or drink a lot. In fact nowadays I do neither. Makes you wonder how some
can being poor.

~~~
lazyjones
This. A lot of habits that make people ill, also make them poor. I'm well-off
but in relatively poor health and don't see how I could "buy" a significantly
better life expectancy at this point. Sure, a shorter organ transplant list
helps in some cases (not mine though), but that specific advantage can't
explain 15 years on average (while smoking alone counts for 10 years or so).

------
mdemare
"Low-income residents in wealthy areas, such as New York City and San
Francisco, have life expectancies significantly longer than those in poorer
regions."

That's somewhat surprising. I wonder if the reverse holds - do rich people in
poorer regions have shorter life expectancies than in richer regions?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Since two replies to this comment suggest the underlying cause might be " less
toxic environments, better ecology (less polluted, less crowded areas - less
infections, less harards, etc)" and " better health care", the answer is no.

According to the original paper, life expectancy in the lowest quartile "were
not significantly correlated with access to medical care, physical
environmental factors, income inequality, or labor market conditions."

[https://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2513561](https://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2513561)

The big correlates seem to be income and behavior (e.g. smoking, obesity).

~~~
adrr
Behavior has to be the biggest. If we look outside the US and populations
known for longevity we see exercise and lower caloric correlations.

Looking at studies surrounding exercise, even simply walking 30 minutes every
day leads to better quality life in terms of health including preventing
cognitive decline. Exercise is also associated with preventing the shortening
of telomeres which scientist believe are connected with aging.

------
sb8244
My argument (currently) is that money can buy a housing location next to your
office. Completely removing a commute is a pretty big happiness booster.

------
limaoscarjuliet
Or, perhaps, people who have health issues make less money?

Correlation is not causation.

~~~
ikeboy
Or something else contributes to both income and health (intelligence seems
like a good candidate, there's a similar multi year life expectancy difference
between the high and low ends).

I wonder how much simply controlling for parents' money and health would make
this go away, although that doesn't separate effects from monetary
inheritance.

~~~
ikeboy
Although poverty might affect intelligence (I'm not sure the current state of
research. Definitely there's a correlation, but I don't know whether genetics
fully explains it or whether we can point a causal arrow from poverty to lower
IQ.)

~~~
gadders
Common sense would appear to suggest that, on the whole, lower IQ could be a
cause for poverty.

~~~
emodendroket
Why do we need to study anything at all when we can just rely on our self-
serving intuitions?

~~~
gadders
So you think having an IQ below 100 wouldn't hamper you in the job market?

~~~
emodendroket
Depends on the work; not all work requires you to be a genius. But simply
saying it's "obvious" that that must be one of the prime drivers of poverty
strikes me as 1) not that obvious at all 2) self-serving

------
ori_b
Having money is strictly better than not having money. This is not something
that is in question.

Money doesn't solve all problems in life. However, nearly every problem that
exists without money will be no worse with money. The reverse is not true.

------
justsaysmthng
I think the conclusion can also be read like this:

A social system were everything is for money is deadly for some.

I wonder if the same conclusion can be replicated in countries with more
social protections (Scandinavia for example).

------
stared
It is useful to look at the comparison between countries:

\- just static graphics: [http://static.gapminder.org/files/vector-
graphics/gapminder-...](http://static.gapminder.org/files/vector-
graphics/gapminder-world-2013.pdf)

\- interactive, new data:
[http://www.gapminder.org/tools/bubbles#_state_marker_size%2F...](http://www.gapminder.org/tools/bubbles#_state_marker_size%2F_label_extent@:0&:1;;&axis%2F_y_zoomedMin:45.8;&axis%2F_x_zoomedMin:543.53&zoomedMax:140375.09)

\- text: [http://www.gapminder.org/posters/gapminder-
world-2013/](http://www.gapminder.org/posters/gapminder-world-2013/)

To be honest, since there is variation between countries (for Russia vs Japan
it is ~20 years!) it would be really surprising if there were no variation
within countries (especially as uneven economically as US).

------
ars
It would be interesting to correlate this with IQ.

It's well known that higher IQ correlates with greater income. I wonder if
higher IQ also correlates with better health.

Even more interesting is if being around people with (on average) higher IQ,
correlates with better health by osmosis of sorts, by people picking up good
habits from those around them.

~~~
idanoeman
Yep. And both of those correlations have plausible causations in both
directions.

* Higher income -> less likelihood of lead poisoning -> higher intelligence

* Higher intelligence -> more success in job market -> higher income

* Better health as a child -> better brain development -> higher intelligence

* Higher intelligence -> more likely to exercise, eat healthy -> better health

------
the_gastropod
This is pretty interesting, given the article about NY's poor being healthier
than other poor Americans that was on the front page of HN yesterday [1]. I
wonder how much of this can be attributed to environmental factors (long
commutes to work, few quality grocery stores, violent crime, etc.) I'm glad
there seems to be a fair bit of interest in figuring this mess out.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/11/upshot/poor-new-yorkers-
te...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/11/upshot/poor-new-yorkers-tend-to-live-
longer-than-other-poor-americans.html?_r=0)

------
givan
Everybody works hard to make money so they can live longer and better then
they realize they forgot to live.

------
reasonattlm
People fixate over these tiny things, little differences in the arrangement of
deck chairs, as they are dying of a medical condition called aging, that might
be controlled and prevented entirely if enough of them stopped fixating on
tiny things and started helping to fund rejuvenation therapies.

There are startup companies now, today, working on the first rejuvenation
treatments that address one of the actual root causes of aging. Oisin
Biotechnologies and UNITY Biotechnology. Look them up, look up the senescent
cell clearance methodologies they are turning from labwork to clinical
treatment. These therapies will not cost very much when ready, simple mass-
produced infusions.

Yet what is in the news and the thing that people pay attention to? Tiny
differences in the status quo, who has a better deck chair as the ship is
going down.

It is a frustrating thing to be living in the human condition.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Didn't you post this exact thing last night?

~~~
reasonattlm
It is an important thing to say.

Among the less attractive aspects of human nature are a fixation with what is
rather than what can be, the tendency to limit the definition of success and
desired outcomes to whatever the best of the present options might be, and a
burning desire to tear down those who have more than you rather than work to
create more for everyone. Even in an age of rapid, radical change driven by
advancing technology, the vast majority of people focus entirely on the
distribution of present assets and opportunities, giving little to no thought
to the much larger set of assets and opportunities that we could create for
tomorrow.

You see this in the vastly greater attention given to any evidence for
distributions and correlations in life expectancy between populations today,
and the tiny amount of attention and support given to the production of
rejuvenation therapies to greatly increase life for everyone at a modest cost.
Given the realization of SENS rejuvenation treatments, the first of which are
already under development in startup companies, and most of which will take
the form of comparatively low-cost, mass-produced infusions, ten year
variations in longevity due to lifestyle choices or access to medicine will be
swamped, made irrelevant and small.

------
CuriouslyC
Note that the centenarian populations of various blue zones are not typically
high income - in fact, many of them are members of rural, agrarian
communities.

Eat good food, get plenty of exercise, and try to relax and be gracious.

------
tn13
This does not surprise me anyone. Richer people can afford better life in
general, better healthcare, better spouses etc. etc. It would be a surprise if
they dont live longer than others.

------
known
Another good reason for
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

------
ommunist
It looks like Universal Income will not drastically improve life expectancy.

------
emodendroket
Is this news to anyone?

~~~
b0t
While it is an obvious truth, it's nice to have some statistics to back up the
notion.

~~~
emodendroket
Fair enough.

------
pmlnr
Come to Europe. We have cookies.

------
JabavuAdams
I wonder whether they accounted for suicide. I'd expect the rates to be higher
in the rust belt.

------
ZenoArrow
Correlation doesn't equal causation. I'd bet that an alcoholic millionaire
would have a shorter life expectancy than a healthy street sweeper. It isn't
money that matters, it's the cultural norms.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Indirect causation is still causation.

Two people have heart-attacks in middle age after eating cheeseburgers their
whole lives. One of them doesn't have health-insurance, and dies, perhaps
having never even received good health advice from a yearly check-up. The
other is well-off, and so gets stabilized in the hospital and eventually
provided with heart surgery (and a whole load of admonishments regarding
lifestyle).

~~~
ZenoArrow
As I said before, it's about the cultural norms, which is exactly what you've
just described.

For an example showing that money and cultural norms are not necessarily
linked, take a look at Ikaria:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-
where-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-
forget-to-die.html?_r=0)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
What cultural norms? We're talking about two men who made exactly the same
_bad_ lifestyle choices. And I know a number of living candidates to be both
these guys!

------
okket
Call me a heretic, but a 10-15 years discrepancy at a baseline of 70+ years
life expectancy does not sound that scary or problematic to me.

~~~
thomasahle
With a median yearly household income of $51,939, that's up to $779,085 you
only get if you're rich.

~~~
imtringued
I think his argument is that you've already retired at that age and it's to be
expected that your live will end in a few years.

