The Cost of Health: Poor Physical, Financial Health Connected

Poor physical health and financial health may be interlinked due to certain psychological factors, according to a recent study. Researchers from the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., found that contributing to a 401(k) retirement plan actually predicted whether or not certain individuals would get help for various health concerns. 

"We find that existing retirement contribution patterns and future health improvements are highly correlated," the study said, in a news release. "Those who save for the future by contributing to a 401(k) improved abnormal health test results and poor health behaviors approximately 27 percent more than non-contributors."

Researchers Lamar Pierce, PhD, associate professor of strategy at Olin and PhD-candidate Timothy Gubler, discuss their findings in a new paper "Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Retirement Planning Predicts Employee Health Improvements," in the journal Psychological Science.

They specifically found that insufficient retirement funds and chronic health issues are connected. With the use of personnel and health data from eight industrial laundry locations throughout multiple states, they discovered that retirement plans often predicted whether individuals would seek medical attention for health problems.

The researchers compared 401(k) contributors to non-contributors on how much they were willing to change a health risk. They were given an initial health screening in which 97 percent of the sample showed at least one abnormal blood test and another 25 percent had a severely abnormal health issue.

The participants were then given information on risky health behaviors and anticipated future health risks. From there, researchers followed the laundry workers for two years to see how they attempted to improve their health and if any of those changes had been tied to financial planning.

Including numerous factors such as initial health, demographic and job type, researchers found that retirement savings and health improvement behaviors were highly connected. In other words, those who had chosen to save for the future through 401(k) contributions significantly improved their health as opposed to non-contributors.