Your retirement planning could indicate your health in future, claims study

If you are not inclined to save for your retirement, you may also have a tendency to ignore your health as poor physical health and financial health are driven by the same underlying psychological factors, according to aresearch published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The paper provides evidence that insufficient retirement funds and chronic health problems are at least partially driven by the same time discounting preferences. So thedecision to contribute to a retirement plan can predict whether or not an individual will act to correct poor physical health indicators, the findings showed.

“We find that existing retirement contribution patterns and future health improvements are highly correlated,” researchers Lamar Pierce and Timothy Gubler wrote.

Gubler and Pierce took personnel and health data from eight industrial laundry locations in multiple states. They found that theprevious decision of an employee to forego immediate income and contribute to a retirement plan predicted whether he or she would respond positively to the revelation of poor physical health.

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“Employees who saved for the future by contributing to a 401(k) showed improvements in their abnormal blood-test results and health behaviours approximately 27% more often than non-contributors did,” the research said.

Contributors showed positive changes like on tests for blood glucose and cholesterol, for example,despite the fact that there were few health differences between contributors and non-contributors prior to program implementation.

How did the test work:

The researchers compared 401(k) contributors to non-contributors on how much they were willing to pay for a health risk. They were given an initial health screening in which 97 percent of the sample showed at least one abnormal blood test and another 25 percent had a severely abnormal health issue.

The employees were also given information on risky health behaviours and anticipated future health risks.

The researchers then followed the laundry workers for two years to see how they attempted to improve their health, and if any changes they made were tied to financial planning habits.

After controlling for differences in initial health, demographics, and job type, the researchers found that retirement savings and health improvement behaviour were highly correlated.