A study has found that there is a correlation between someone making poor long term heath decisions and them making poor long term financial decisions.
Are poor physical and financial health driven by the same underlying psychological factors? We found that the decision to contribute to a 401(k) retirement plan predicted whether an individual acted to correct poor physical-health indicators revealed during an employer-sponsored health examination. Using this examination as a quasi-exogenous shock to employees' personal-health knowledge, we examined which employees were more likely to improve their health, controlling for differences in initial health, demographics, job type, and income. We found that existing retirement-contribution patterns and future health improvements were highly correlated. Employees who saved for the future by contributing to a 401(k) showed improvements in their abnormal blood-test results and health behaviors approximately 27% more often than noncontributors did. These findings are consistent with an underlying individual time-discounting trait that is both difficult to change and domain interdependent, and that predicts long-term individual behaviors in multiple dimensions.
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Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim Calls for Three-Day Workweek to Improve Quality of Life
Mexican billionaire tycoon, Carlos Slim, has called for the introduction of a three-day working week, offset by longer hours and a later retirement, as a way to improve people's quality of life and create a more productive labour force.
Slim made the comments when speaking to a business conference in Paraguay, suggesting that the workforce could be spread over a full week, with employees working up to 10 or 11 hours a day.
"With three work days a week, we would have more time to relax; for quality of life," the Financial Times reports Slim saying. (paywalled)
The business conference, Growing Together - States and Enterprises, was held in Asuncion and was attended by business and political leaders from across Latin America.
"Having four days [off] would be very important to generate new entertainment activities and other ways of being occupied," Slim said. He said current retirement ages come from a time of lower life expectancies, and should rise to 70 or 75.
Anybody want a 75 year old hauling away his trash?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02 2014, @07:58PM
Making sound financial plans and making positive health decisions both involve delayed gratification, a topic which has been studied, most famously in the marshmallow experiment with young kids.
People with poor impulse control will be more likely to buy the 22 inch rims than put that money in their IRA, and they're more likely to east fast food and watch tv than go jogging and prepare a healthy meal.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday July 03 2014, @04:18AM
or
FTFY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02 2014, @08:04PM
Two things which common sense would tell you are correlated are CONFIRMED to be correlated by a study! Stop the presses!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 02 2014, @08:04PM
"controlling for differences in"
Would have been interesting to correct for differences on the financial side.
Where I work, the checkbox of "offers a 401K" is seen as a recruiting plus, but actually running the plan is seen as an expense to minimize so the dilbertian solution to the problem is no matching and only offer like 4 choices all junk that pays below inflation (some federal bond funds and the like). I really don't care because I expect 70s era inflation (or worse) before I retire anyway, so why save $10 today when a roll of toilet paper will cost $1000 when I retire. So participation is quite low, although at least some of us are semi-healthy.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Buck Feta on Wednesday July 02 2014, @08:23PM
> so why save $10 today when a roll of toilet paper will cost $1000 when I retire.
I have my 401k invested in toilet paper futures.
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02 2014, @08:43PM
Is it the time to invest in toilet paper futures derivatives yet?
(Score: 1) by fadrian on Wednesday July 02 2014, @08:57PM
Too late. There's already HFT on that market. You'd get killed.
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02 2014, @08:46PM
Hoarding money is a psychological problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday July 02 2014, @09:45PM
"Hoarding" is a subjective term. In order for it to be a psychological problem IMHO, it actually has to harm the person engaging in the activity.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by n1 on Wednesday July 02 2014, @10:08PM
What if it harms other people? Hoarding vast wealth (money, food, water, property) far beyond personal needs while family, friends and neighbors starve as an example. Eating caviar and drinking Krug all alone in theit castle whilst being apathetic to everything but their own desires is surely a psychological problem.
Having no capacity for empathy or compassion, which will result in hoarding is a psychological problem in my book. Even without that, if the desire to hoard is so great you may lie, cheat and steal to obtain more of what ever it is you want. It may not be harming the person (maybe helping by satisfying desires), but it will certainly be negatively affecting, or even harming others.
This could be that hoarding is a symptom of other psychological problems, hoarding by itself may not be a psychological problem, but I struggle to believe that there are any hoarders out there that don't have any other underlying issues. These problems may or may not result in physical harm to themselves or others.
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:23AM
What of that? Such behavior is a straightforward, rational decision even if you should whine otherwise. Most harmful behaviors aren't psychological problems. Instead they are routine conflicts of interest with the party taking their interests over those of others.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02 2014, @10:30PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetty_Green [wikipedia.org]
Read the page on Wikpedia to learn more about the "World's Greatest Miser" per Guinness Book of World Records.
Linked there is this related entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:25AM
And we see in this case, that the "hoarding" in question resulted in actual harm to Hetty Green. So yes, I would agree that was a psychological problem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday July 02 2014, @08:54PM
Sign in insurance agent's office: "These people did not plan to fail, they failed to plan!" And I thought, "Not necessarily!" For some people failure is a carefully thought out plan, basically one to obtain revenge. But sometimes Fortune is fickle, and these people succeed despite their best efforts, and live to a ripe old age, cursing their luck all the while.
So let's cut the Calvinism right now, up front. The poor are not poor because they moral or intellectual inferiors, ill health is not the fault of the ill. And the 1% are not there out of merit.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by cafebabe on Wednesday July 02 2014, @09:41PM
Correlation does not show causation! Perhaps people with illness are directing funds toward treatment or are suffering a shortfall in income?
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:55AM
The summary, article and abstract only note that there is a correlation - they do not suggest that there is a causation of one to the other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @12:00PM
After a while, you see the template and not the individual study. Researchers find a correlation between two things, imply but do not say they are causally related, and suggest further study is necessary. They pump these studies out, I guess because they need to publish something. It's so easy to find a correlation. They're everywhere, and not even all that remarkable.
There is a strong correlation between people who microwave cats and eat pizza rolls. E-mail me if you want one. A pizza roll, I mean, not a cat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @12:04PM
True, and they also dress up what they say in social-science mumbo-jumbo like "underlying individual time-discounting trait" and "long-term individual behaviors in multiple dimensions".
Of course, 30% of any population sample would probably show improved health over time, right? I mean, people generally tend to get better over time naturally?
And I got to wonder what this "research" is telling us, since the people who were healthy would be able to work and contribute to a retirement account. The rest would be out of work and not making money.