Smoking, divorce and alcohol abuse have the closest connection to death out of 57 social and behavioural factors analyzed in research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study analyzed survey data collected from 13,611 adults in the U.S. between 1992 and 2008, and identified which factors applied to those who died between 2008 and 2014.
“It shows that a lifespan approach is needed to really understand health and mortality,” said Eli Puterman, assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s school of kinesiology and lead author of the study.
“For example, instead of just asking whether people are unemployed, we looked at their history of unemployment over 16 years. If they were unemployed at any time, was that a predictor of mortality? It’s more than just a one-time snapshot in people’s lives, where something might be missed because it did not occur. Our approach provides a look at potential long-term impacts through a lifespan lens.”
Life expectancy in the U.S. has stagnated for three decades relative to other industrialized countries, raising questions about which factors might be contributing. Biological factors and medical conditions are always at the top of the list, so this study intentionally excluded those in favour of social, psychological, economic, and behavioural factors.
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