Forbes magazine has found that billionaires enjoy only a small advantage in life expectancy over the average American. (same article here)
The average age of death for the 20 billionaires featured in the 2004 and 2005 “In Memoriam” sections of the annual Forbes Billionaires list was 78. We compared this number with the average male life expectancy in the U.S., since all but one of the 20 billionaires on our list that died were males: the billionaires lived 3.5 years longer than average American males. The results would be even more dramatic if we took into account average life expectancies from around the world, since the billionaires on our list are of all different nationalities.
A large part of that difference may not even be due to the ability of the wealth of those billionaires to buy better health care. Writing for Forbes back in June 2004 Dan Seligman pointed out that national health case services have not decreased the gap in life expectancy between upper and lower classes.
But even ten years ago, when this magazine last delved into the topic (FORBES, Jan. 31, 1994), the available answers seemed inadequate. If access was the key, then one would have expected the health gap between upper and lower classes to shrink or disappear with the advent of programs like Britain’s National Health Service and America’s Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention employer-sponsored health insurance. In fact, the gap widened in both Britain and America as these programs took effect. The 1994 article cited a study of British civil servants–all with equal access to medical care and other social services, and all working in similar physical environments–showing that even within this homogeneous group the higher-status employees were healthier: “Each civil service rank outlived the one immediately below.” How could this be?
There are already known substantial differences in life expectancy between the social classes. So even an upper middle class person has a longer life expectancy than average. It is safe to assume that billionaires, like the upper middle class, are a lot smarter than the average person. Seligman points to the research of Linda Gottfredson and Ian Deary which points to average differences in intelligence as an explanation for why the social classes differ in life expectancies.
An explanation not presenting these problems has recently been proposed in several papers by two scholars long associated with IQ studies: Linda Gottfredson, a sociologist based at the University of Delaware, and psychologist Ian Deary of the University of Edinburgh. Their solution to the age-old mystery of health and status is at once utterly original and supremely obvious. The rich live longer, they write, mainly because the rich are smarter. The argument rests on several different propositions, all well documented. The crucial points are that (a) social status correlates strongly and positively with IQ and other measures of intelligence;(b) intelligence correlates strongly with “health literacy,” the ability to understand and follow a prescription for disease prevention and treatment; and (c) intelligence is also correlated with forward planning–which means avoidance of health risks (including smoking) as they are identified.
