What is it about?
Our social lives are important as we age. We studied over 8000 older adults who answered 180 questions about every aspect of their social lives. We used this comprehensive survey and identified the 8 strongest predictors of longevity and healthy aging: neighborhood cleanliness, perceived control over financial situation, meeting with children less than yearly, not working for pay, being active with children, volunteering, feeling isolated, being treated with less courtesy or respect.
Featured Image
Photo by Philippe Leone on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The prior scientific work has looked at individual social factors. This analysis simultaneously looks at more than 180 social factors to identify the 8 most predictive elements. The result is a more holistic analysis of the importance of our social lives in predicting healthy aging. We also show that our social lives are as important as our medical conditions in predicting healthy aging.
Perspectives
“We often overemphasize the importance of medical conditions when thinking about longevity. This research demonstrates that our social lives are as important as medical conditions,”
Sachin Shah
Harvard University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Social Frailty Index: Development and validation of an index of social attributes predictive of mortality in older adults, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 2023, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2209414120.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
