TRENDING SCIENCE: Be kind, live longer

There’s growing evidence that sharing, volunteering or helping others can create a win-win for the giver and receiver. All are emotionally rewarding, promoting psychological well-being and better mental health.

According to a new study published in the journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’, the key to a long, healthy and happy life is to be generous. Being generous gives you stronger social connections that make you healthier and happier, so you live longer.In a 34-country study spanning the globe, the researchers suggest that intergenerational sharing and longevity are related. Higher levels of intergenerational resource sharing are linked to lower mortality rates across a society. This type of sharing includes gifts from one age or generation to another. It occurs between relatives, such as from parents to children, or through a more formal system, such as retirement benefits or healthcare from taxpayers. Transferring resources isn’t just about money. It’s sharing knowledge, volunteering, or cooking, caring and reading to others.

“At the beginning of life you are reliant on others,” lead author Tobias Vogt from the Faculty of Spatial Sciences at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands told ‘CNN’. “It’s a good idea to help others throughout the course of our lives.”“What is new about our study is that for the first time we have combined transfer payments from state and family and evaluated the effect,” co-author and demographer Fanny Kluge from the Max Planck Institute in Germany commented in a press release. Generosity helps people in societies live longer, irrespective of the level of their wealth. “Our analyses suggest that redistribution influences the mortality rate of a country, regardless of the per capita gross domestic product,” noted Kluge.

The research team calculated payments received and given by each person concerning their lifetime income. To do so, it analysed data from the National Transfer Accounts project that includes accounts from over 60 countries measuring how people at each age create, consume and share resources, and save for the future. Western European countries and Japan were at the top in sharing resources and achieving low mortality levels. France and Japan, the societies with the lowest mortality rates, shared about 69 % of their lifetime incomes. In contrast, countries like China and Turkey, who share less than 50 %, had double the risk of death for a person over 65 in the coming year. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa and south-east Asia had low rates of sharing.

In the year of COVID-19 and the considerable losses in resources as a result of the pandemic, the findings are more relevant than ever before. Our capacity to help one another and our willingness to share becomes even more important.