Why do rich people live longer than poor people?
It might sound like a silly question that you already know the answer to.
“oh they have better access to healthcare” Right?
Well no…
That’s NOT the biggest factor in places like the united states, Canada, Europe and
most developed Asian countries.
Instead there is something more going on here that is less obvious than rich people get
treated for all of their illnesses while poor people do not.
Now this is a big deal, multiple studies have found that wealthiest 10% of people in these
developed countries live around an extra 10 years more than their less wealthy peers.
What’s more is that they remain disability free for eight to nine years longer than their
peers, which means not only are they living longer, they are living better lives.
Now this might sound like a uniquely American issue bit the same top 10% rule has been found
to apply to other countries too.
Chile is a much poorer country than the United States, but it has a longer life expectancy.
That life expectancy is further stretched out by around a decade in the top 10% of wealthiest
citizens, so absolute wealth and access to resources isn’t the key factor here.
With talks about retirement ages being pushed back further and further this little statistical
anomaly should be something we are all paying very close attention to, because it’s actually
something we can learn a lot from.
Alright so everybody that watches my channel frequently will know that I hate dragging
out answers just to get my watch time up, sooooo what is this secret sauce that is keeping
rich people alive?
Well two things… the first is actually something they are missing…
Stress… or at least ONE very specific type of stress.
The second thing is that we might have been looking at this equation all wrong from the
get go, wealth might have less to do with how long you live, than how long you live
determining your wealth.
Now the good news for all of you who just got “stressed” by hearing about how your
stress is going to kill you, is that wealth is by no means a prerequisite to avoiding
this kind of biological time bomb, it just inherently makes it a lot easier.
Beyond that there are other types of stress that mean very little to your long term health,
and likewise there are some factors at play for certain people that massively overshadow
this factor altogether.
So it’s time to learn how money works to find out how it can be used to keep you living
your best life for an extra decade.
A special thanks as always to my channel members and supporters on patreon for making these
slightly more controversial video’s possible.
Alright so the first thing we need to look at is how this apparent discrepancy was found
because yes, if you were to compare the life expectancy of the average American with the
average citizen of Sierra Leon, then obviously one group is going to be far wealthier, and
that wealthier group is going to live longer “on average”, BUT this comparison has
less to do with stress and more to do with ongoing conflicts, access to clean drinking
water and a severe healthcare deficiencies (especially when considering infant mortality).
So yes, in this example you would be right, access to healthcare is much more important,
but this comparison is not what we are interested in here.
Instead we want to see the differences between rich and poor within advanced nations.
To do that the first place we should look is a 2020 study by the oxford journal of gerontology.
“Gerontology being the biological study of aging”
This report looked at a number of factors amongst two groups of over-fifties from both
the UK and the United States.
The results were that wealth above any other variable was the biggest determining factor
in quality and length of life amongst this group of over 50’s.
Now studies like these are really useful because of what they include but perhaps more importantly
what they don’t include.
By simply looking at people who were over 50 the study was able to remove statistical
mortality outliers like most workplace accidents, congenital disorders and infant mortality.
What this means is that the study was able to ignore a lot of the statistical noise that
comes with dying at an early age and focus on factors that would apply to the broader
population.
Would a multi-millionaire daredevil have a shorter life expectancy than a low income
office worker?
Oh yeah you bet, of course, but that’s not really relevant to most people in the population
and by design it would not be included here, assuming that is that our daredevil is not
over 50 years old.
This study is also particularly relevant because it looked at both the United States, where
access to certain preventative medical treatments will depend on access to health insurance,
and the UK where access to medical treatments is widely accessible through the NHS.
Despite what most people would assume is a major factor, the findings were pretty much
the same.
The richest people in both the UK and the USA lived lives that were healthier and longer
by about a decade than poorest people in both countries, suggesting that healthcare is not
the only thing that money can buy to extend your life.
So this is where this particular studies usefulness ends.
You see it was a broad study designed to look at what it was that determines life expectancy
in broad populations of people.
It controlled for extraneous factors and looked at what was left.
Overwhelmingly that was wealth.
But this study didn’t explain why?...
…
There is no logical connection between the numbers in your bank account and the health
of your body.
Your heart, lungs and liver don’t know what a 401k is, and it doesn’t really impact
their function.
Because of this most people would assume that there has to be some middleman variable between
these two factors.
Money can buy you healthcare, money means you can eat better food, more money is the
sign of a white-collar job with less physically demanding work, or maybe its even that more
money can buy you a safer cleaner place to live.
All of these connections sound reasonable enough.
The problem is that the 2020 study along with a host of other similar studies controlled
for these variables, and still found that wealth was mysteriously linked to our longevity.
Well Stanford professor Dr. Robert Sapolsky and Sir Michael Marmot of the University College
London might have the answer, and it is counterintuitively that… yes… your body does actually know
you are poor, because, of, chronic, stress.
Now I am by no means a Stanford biology professor so I will leave a link to both of their papers
as well as an entire documentary made on this issue if you want to learn more about the
bio mechanics of it all.
But what you need to know as it relates to this question is that people from the perceived
lower rungs of society are constantly stressed out over certain things, debts, housing affordability,
bills, and living expenses.
Beyond this people with less wealth are more likely to be working jobs that are not necessarily
“harder’ per say, but ARE much more demeaning.
You are much more likely to be spoken down to as a minimum wage retail worker who is
easily replaceable, rather than as a senior manager with a very specific set of skills
that are hard to replicate.
It’s a horrible reality, and it absolutely.
Should.
Not.
Be.
The.
Case, but as anybody who has worked in retail or hospitality will tell you it’s a good
day when you don’t get yelled at by an incompetent manager or an angry customer.
Low respect working environments and financial instability also combine with the fact that
less wealth means less options.
If a financial stable professional is getting constantly abused at their job they can just
quit.
They have the financial safety net to take the few weeks without a pay check needed to
find a new job.
Someone working a minimum wage job does not have that luxury.
Now you might think that this is all wrong, if anything most high end jobs are more stressful.
It’s hard to argue that a trauma surgeon or a trial lawyer is exposed to less stress
than a Walmart employee which is true, but these studies specified that this was all
down to the specific type of stress…
Chronic Stress.
Chronic stress is the type of stress that is felt constantly, it’s the type of stress
that comes from waking up after going to bed too late, getting into a car that may or may
not start, sitting in traffic for an hour hoping you get to a job that you hate on time
so that you don’t get yelled at for being late.
It’s the stress you feel when you need to balance three rosters between four jobs that
only ever give you 5 hour shifts but expect you to be available at the drop of a hat.
Chronic stress is the stress that you feel going to bed and knowing that there is no
way for you to avoid the same predicament happening tomorrow, the next week, the month
after that and perhaps for the rest of your life without some kind of miracle.
Chronic stress causes you to stay up until 4am watching video’s on why you will never
retire, both heightening your awareness of your shifty situation while simultaneously
making it harder to wake up early the next day to beat the traffic to get to the horrible
job before getting yelled at.
Chronic stress is the type of stress that comes from knowing that despite working 50
hours a week you are still seen as lazy an unmotivated by people in society that have
had it a lot easier than yourself and have subsequently done a lot more with their lives.
Chronic stress is probably what you are feeling right now if any of this is at all relevant
to you, and for that I am sorry, because this type of chronic stress is what is killing
you.
Again I am not a doctor or a biology professor so I encourage you to read the papers linked
below if you are interested in the details, but this type of chronic stress slowly releases
cortisol into your body.
Cortisol works to shut down the functions of the body that are not needed in a fight
or flight situation.
You don’t need your kidney, liver or immune system in a life of death situation, you basically
just need your heart, lungs and muscles to be given every resource your body has to offer.
This is very useful if you are running away from a lion, but it is very damaging if switched
on all the time by comparatively meaningless stimuli.
Chronic stress differs from the acute stress which is much more prevalent in the roles
that are more widely associated with being stressful.
Yes a hedge fund manager might experience higher peaks of stress during a client negotiation
or a friendly call from the SEC, but at the end of the day they will get back into a comfortable
car, take a short commute, to one of their amazing homes and not have to worry about
whether they should pay for electricity or groceries.
A lifetime of even mild but persistent stress can do enough damage to the body to seriously
limit lifespans and reduce quality of life in twilight years.
Now I know one solution to this problem is to you know… “stop being poor”… but
that is obviously easier said than done especially for the people that find themselves subject
to this persistent stress most often.
A more workable solution for everybody is to make sure you set some time aside every
day to simply relax and take stock of what it is that you need to do and how you are
going to do it.
Another solution is to move to a country with a more equitable social structure.
Going back to the examples we explored at the beginning of the video, there are countries
in places like Scandinavia, southern Europe and even south America which are much poorer
in nominal terms than the US, but because inequality is less severe in these places
so too is this chronic stress issue.
So yeah, we humans live longer and a less stressed when we are at the top of respective
populations and our position in that population matter much more than how prosperous the population
is as a whole.
Make of that what you will…
…
Alright now there is one last factor at play here and it’s really important to explore
because it is a textbook example of the problems that can arise when looking for correlation
in statistics.
Correlation does not always equal causation, and the causation might not necessarily be
in the direction you might expect.
So far all we have been searching for the reason why being upper class leads to longer
lifespans, and certainly we have found some very compelling arguments.
But maybe what we should have been doing instead is asking if living longer, gives someone
a higher chance of BEING in the top 10%.
Longevity on an individual level is highly dependant on genetics.
A family with genes that allow them to live longer healthier lives will naturally have
some major advantages when it comes to the accumulation of wealth.
For starters they might avoid the illnesses that run in some other families that will
be costly and time consuming to treat.
Beyond that having an extra decade with strong health means that these individuals may be
able to work longer in the kind of senior roles that tend to go to people with lots
of experience.
Of course good genes would not be the only thing that these lucky families pass down
to their children.
A longer life means that inheritance will go to children who themselves will be middle
aged and financially self sufficient.
This is massively preferable to children who receive money while in their 20’s or 30’s
because these younger recipients will be far more likely to squander the money rather than
using it to compliment their already established personal finances.
Studies have been conducted on this relationship and the results do suggest that genealogical
lifespan can be as big a determinant of wealth as wealth can be a determinant of lifespan.
Now these studies were smaller and narrower than the ones that we looked at earlier but
I hope that it gives you a better understanding of how statistical relationships work next
time that someone gives you an article or talks about a study with some new wild relationship.
A great example of “technically” correct data being presented in a very misleading
way can be found with all the talk around “THE GREAT RESIGNATION”.
If you are scared about the headlines saying 40% of the workforce is about to quit their
jobs, go and check out that video to see again why it’s always so important to read beyond
the headlines.
I want to again thank my new patrons and channel members for continuing to make it possible
for everybody to learn How Money Works.