Study Shows Having Children Makes You Live Longer

Pixabay

People who have kids have a longer life expectancy than people who don’t, according to a new Swedish study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

In research that looked at the 1.4 million Swedes born between 1911 and 1925, Dr. Karin Modig of the Karolinska Institute found that having kids was correlated with a direct boost in lifespan for both men and women. At 60 years old, men with at least one child could expect to live two years longer than childless peers, while women got an extra year and a half, on average. This mortality gap between parents and non-parents increased as time went on, with fathers having a 17.7 percent chance of reaching the age of 90, while childless men had a 16.2 chance.

Fabian Blank

The difference in life expectancy was approximately twice as large for unmarried men — including those who were widowed or divorced — as it was for married men. Modig attributed this discrepancy to the fact that married men, even without children, tended to be healthier with the support of a spouse than their single peers.

Given that the difference in mortality rates only increased as subjects got older, the research points to a few key factors why parents might be better off. For one thing, “at old age, the stress of parenthood is likely to be lower and instead, parents can benefit from social support from their children,” while elderly, childless people who live alone cannot take advantage of a similar support system. What’s more, it’s also likely that as a result of raising children, parents have healthier habits overall than non-parents, which help to sustain them in old age.