A good book may do more than occupy a quiet afternoon, but one of the most repeated claims about reading and longevity is more complicated than it first appears. A Yale analysis of 3,635 Americans aged 50 and older found that people who read books had a lower risk of dying during as much as 12 years of follow-up. Those who read more than 3.5 hours a week had a 23 percent lower mortality hazard than people who did not read books. Yet the study does not show that reading itself adds years to a person's life.
The research, published in Social Science & Medicine in 2016, drew on data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, a large national survey that follows adults over age 50. Avni Bavishi, Martin Slade and Becca Levy examined whether book reading at baseline was associated with survival over the years that followed. The researchers were interested in more than whether older adults read, because they also compared reading intensity and accounted for a wide range of social, economic and health differences. That made the study more informative than a simple comparison between people who happened to enjoy books and those who did not.
