Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Retirement Planning Predicts Employee Health Improvements

Keywords

time discounting, intemporal choice, domain interdependence, retirement savings, employee health, field data

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.

Original Publication Citation

"Gubler, Timothy, and Lamar Pierce (2014). “Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Retirement Planning Predicts Employee Health Improvements,” Psychological Science, 25(9): 1822-1830."

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2014

Publisher

Psychological Science

Language

English

College

Marriott School of Business

Department

Marketing

University Standing at Time of Publication

Associate Professor

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