Looking for a Longer Life? Win a Nobel Prize

THURSDAY, Jan. 25, 2007 (HealthDay News) -- If you want to live longer, just win a Nobel Prize.

Attaining that lofty award can add nearly two years to your life span, according to a study by researchers at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.

The researchers conducted the study to explore whether social status alone can affect the well-being and life span of people. Previous research has found that social status does have a positive effect on the longevity of monkeys.

However, it has been a challenge to separate the effects of status alone, because it's often intertwined with other factors such as wealth. The researchers decided that Nobel Prize winners were an ideal group for this kind of study because their social status occurs suddenly when they win the award.

For this study, the researchers compared 524 male Nobel Prize winners (135) and nominees (389) in physics and chemistry between 1901 and 1950. The average life span of the winners was 77.2 years, compared with 75.8 years for the nominees.

When the researchers compared winners and nominees from the same countries, they found that the longevity gap increased by an average of about two-thirds of a year.

"Status seems to work a kind of health-giving magic. Once we do the statistical corrections, walking across that platform in Stockholm apparently adds about two years to a scientist's life span. How status does this, we just don't know," study co-author Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick, said in a prepared statement.

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