title: Healthy, wealthy, and wise: retirement planning predicts employee health improvements.
abstract: Are poor physical and financial health driven by the same underlying psychological factors? We found that the decision to contribute to a 401(k) retirement plan predicted whether an individual acted to correct poor physical-health indicators revealed during an employer-sponsored health examination. Using this examination as a quasi-exogenous shock to employees' personal-health knowledge, we examined which employees were more likely to improve their health, controlling for differences in initial health, demographics, job type, and income. We found that existing retirement-contribution patterns and future health improvements were highly correlated. Employees who saved for the future by contributing to a 401(k) showed improvements in their abnormal blood-test results and health behaviors approximately 27% more often than noncontributors did. These findings are consistent with an underlying individual time-discounting trait that is both difficult to change and domain interdependent, and that predicts long-term individual behaviors in multiple dimensions.
authors: Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis.
authors: Timothy
authors: T
authors: Gubler
authors: Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis pierce@wustl.edu.
authors: Lamar
authors: L
authors: Pierce
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016272:Occupational Health; D010415:Pensions; D012179:Retirement
keywords: domain interdependence; employee health; field data; intertemporal choice; retirement savings; time discounting