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May 07, 2013 at 10:08 AM
Family background, early-life and mid-life conditions help to determine one’s longevity, new research shows.
The Center on Aging/NORC, Chicago, arrives at this conclusion in a research paper, “Determinants of Exceptional Longevity: Early-Life Conditions, Mid-Life Environment and Parental Characteristics.” The report finds that parental longevity and some mid-life factors are greater predictors of longevity than childhood conditions.
“The results of this study demonstrate that both the region of children residence and the household property status [are] the two most significant variables that affect the chances of a household to produce a future centenarian (for both sons and daughters), the reports’ authors, Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova, state in their report. “Spending a childhood in the Mountain Pacific and West-Pacific regions in the U.S. [was] found to increase chances of long life (by a factor of three) compared to the Northeastern part of the country.”
Among the paper’s findings:
Wives of centenarians tend to live 0.8 years less on average than married sisters of centenarians.
People born between September and November have significantly higher chances of exceptional longevity than people born in March, suggesting a long-lasting influence of season of birth on longevity.
