New research challenges commonly held belief
Many studies have linked wealth and life expectancy, generally concluding that the rich live longer on average than those at the bottom of income scales.
But a new study debunks that belief and says that studies should include income mobility for a more realistic calculation.
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen say that in real life people do not necessarily stay rich or stay poor, a common assumption of studies relating wealth to life expectancy.
They realised that over a ten-year period half of the poorest people move into higher income bands, while half of the richest move down into lower bands.
Having found a new way to take income mobility into account, Danish economists Claus Thustrup Kreiner, Torben Heien Nielsen, and Benjamin Ly Serena from Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI) at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) discovered that the gap in life expectancy between income classes is not that big.
Using official Danish data, the study found that when income mobility is not factored-in, the gap in life expectancy between the richest and the poorest men and women is 5 years. But with income mobility included in the calculation, the gap is 2.4 years for men and 2.2 years for women.
Image Credit: University of Copenhagen, Center for Economic Behaviour and Inequality
The full results are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
