The oldest study of happiness has one finding, and it isn't about romance

Today is the one day a year the country agrees that a relationship is worth money. The longest-running study of adult life ever conducted agrees too, but not about which relationship. The Harvard Study of Adult Development began in 1938 with 724 men — Harvard sophomores and boys from Boston's poorest neighborhoods — and has followed them, and now their children, for eighty-eight years. Its directors have had decades to find the thing that predicts a long and healthy life. The thing is not cholesterol, wealth or fame. It is the quality of a person's relationships in midlife: the participants most satisfied with their relationships at fifty were the healthiest at eighty. All of their relationships — spouses, yes, but also friends, siblings, neighbors, colleagues, the people who would notice if they were gone.

What that kind of evidence can and can't say. It is observational, which means it cannot prove that relationships cause health; people who are already well may find connection easier. But the finding has held across the study's whole span, across the Harvard men and the Boston men, and it matches the broader literature — a 2010 meta-analysis of 148 studies found stronger social ties associated with about 50% higher odds of survival. No other factor in the study has been that consistent for that long. That is what the weight of evidence looks like when nobody is selling anything.

Loree’s take

On Valentine's Day I think about the patients who have one person and the patients who have none, because the difference between them is larger than almost anything on a lab panel. The study's lesson is not "find a partner." It is that the number of people who would help you move is a health measure, and most of my over-optimized patients have let it fall while they tracked everything else. Call someone today who is not your valentine.

Ben’s take

There is a holiday for one relationship because one relationship can be sold — dinner, flowers, a ring. There is no holiday for the friend you have had since college, because nobody can invoice it. The study has been saying for decades that the uninvoiceable relationships are where the health is. Markets are very good at serving the needs they can price and silent about the ones they cannot. Today is a good day to notice the silence.