Moxie matters: associations of future orientation with active life expectancy

ABSTRACT

Objective: Being oriented toward the future has been associated with better future health. We studied associations of future orientation with life expectancy and the percentage of life with disability.

Method: We used the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (n = 5249). Participants’ average age in 1968 was 33.0. Six questions repeatedly measured future orientation, 1968–1976. Seven waves (1999–2011, 33,331 person-years) measured disability in activities of daily living for the same individuals, whose average age in 1999 was 64.0. We estimated monthly probabilities of disability and death with multinomial logistic Markov models adjusted for age, sex, race/ethnicity, childhood health, and education. Using the probabilities, we created large populations with microsimulation, measuring disability in each month for each individual, age 55 through death.

Results: Life expectancy from age 55 for white men with high future orientation was age 77.6 (95% confidence interval 75.5–79.0), 6.9% (4.9–7.2) of those years with disability; results with low future orientation were 73.6 (72.2–75.4) and 9.6% (7.7–10.7). Comparable results for African American men were 74.8 (72.9–75.3), 8.1 (5.6–9.3), 71.0 (69.6–72.8), and 11.3 (9.1–11.7). For women, there were no significant differences associated with levels of future orientation for life expectancy. For white women with high future orientation 9.1% of remaining life from age 55 was disabled (6.3–9.9), compared to 12.4% (10.2–13.2) with low future orientation. Disability results for African American women were similar but statistically significant only at age 80 and over.

Conclusion: High future orientation during early to middle adult ages may be associated with better health in older age.

KEYWORDS:

• Active life expectancy
• aging
• disability, mortality
• future orientation

Acknowledgments

We thank Jan Warren-Findlow, PhD, Steven Zarit, PhD, and three anonymous reviewers for useful comments about this research.

Disclosure Statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research or authorship of this manuscript. The data used for this study are available from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, http://simba.isr.umich.edu/data/data.aspx. The collection of data used in this study was partly supported by the National Institutes of Health under grant number R01 HD069609, and the National Science Foundation under award number 1157698.