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posted by janrinok on Monday August 22 2016, @06:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the marriage-is-good-for-you! dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:25AM

    by Francis (5544) on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:25AM (#391968)

    For now, I've got more interest in taking care of my body so that it lasts as long as possible. However, I do think that once I retire, I'll probably start indulging a lot more in the things that I'm personally interested in.

    I think there's something to be said for hitting 70 or 80 and then just taking advantage of that stage of life to do all sorts of unhealthy things. I think that 70 relatively good years is more than what most people get. I rarely get sick these days and I don't obsess about stupid things like sanitizing the entire environment around me.