A new study has shown that you can lower your risk of death by 5% for every $50,000 you make. Money might not be able to buy you happiness, but it seems like it can buy you a little more time on this earth. New research shows that having money can help add a few years to one’s life.

Northwestern University researchers say that when a middle-aged person accumulates an extra $50,000, the risk of death for that person drops by around 5%. Conversely, those who have saved $140,000 more than, say, a sibling or friend, automatically increase their chances of outliving them. This study was conducted on around 5,400 people in America. These people were tracked for nearly twenty-five years.

Study Author Statements 

Dr. Eric Finegood, a corresponding author, says that your networth could determine how long you live. Dr. Finegood is a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern’s Institute of Policy Research. The Coronavirus pandemic helps widen the wealth gap, which isn’t such a big surprise. Amid all the misery caused by COVID-19, there were more than 5.2 million new millionaires in the United States alone, bringing the total to slightly over 56 million. Mortality rates dropped by around 55 for every extra $50,000 made by middle-aged folks.

Moreover, the same thing was seen among the 2,480 people who were either siblings or twins. Big earners and those with high networths had a better chance of outliving their sisters and brothers with smaller incomes. Dr. Finegood said that a difference of around $130,000 was linked with a 13% relative drop in the risk of death almost a quarter-century later. The doctor claimed that this favored the person with a higher overall income and net worth.

This suggests that you can have better health the more affluent you are. This is the first study of its kind. The data used in this research came from MIDUS (Midlife in the United States). Information of the middle-aged people participating was gathered from around 1994 to 1996.