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For older adults, having more or closer family members in one's social network decreases his or her likelihood of death, but having a larger or closer group of friends does not, finds a new study that will be presented at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).
"We found that older individuals who had more family in their network, as well as older people who were closer with their family were less likely to die," said James Iveniuk, the lead author of the study and a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health. "No such associations were observed for number of or closeness to friends."
[...] In the first wave, these older adults were asked to list up to five of their closest confidants, describe in detail the nature of each relationship, and indicate how close they felt to each person. Excluding spouses, the average number of close confidants named was 2.91, and most older adults perceived high levels of support from their social contacts. Additionally, most respondents were married, in good physical health, and reported not being very lonely.
Iveniuk and co-author L. Philip Schumm, a senior biostatistician at the University of Chicago, found that older adults who reported feeling "extremely close" on average to the non-spousal family members they listed as among their closest confidants had about a six percent risk of mortality within the next five years, compared to approximately a 14 percent risk of mortality among those who reported feeling "not very close" to the family members they listed.
Furthermore, the study found that respondents who listed more non-spousal family members in their network—irrespective of closeness—had lower odds of death compared to those who listed fewer family members. "Regardless of the emotional content of a connection, simply having a social relationship with another person may have benefits for longevity," Iveniuk said.
Iveniuk said he was surprised that feeling closer to one's family members and having more relatives as confidants decreased the risk of death for older adults, but that the same was not true of relationships with friends.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday August 22 2016, @07:51PM
Hmm perhaps living a life constrained by knowing you won't get help kills you quicker than living a life of relying on others.
I donno about that. My MiL lives by herself in a giant house and needs a lot of help to keep living there (houses are high maintenance) She's broken a leg tripping over a garden hose, all kinds of stuff like that on a much smaller scale. Its certainly more stressful when the roof leaks and its her problem not the apartment owner's headache.
On the other hand my childless UncleInLaw lives in a seniors apartment where at some expense he doesn't even have to cook and they help him a bit even with mere tidying up the place. Supposedly that'll kill him quicker than owning a headache house?
Maybe the only argument I can come up with is the exercise benefits of being a home owning peasant outweigh the acute danger of falling off ladders or WTF? You'd think that living in an apartment and exercising would result in the lowest fatality rate. Still, I wouldn't think aerobic ladder climbing and gutter cleaning would be the ideal form of senior citizen exercise...
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Tuesday August 23 2016, @08:52AM