Assessment of the link between life purpose and health

Abstract Background This study examined the temporal relations between a decline in health and changes in life purpose to better understand the causal direction between life purpose and morbidity. Methods Over a 16-year period, 7598 individuals completed up to four quadrennial surveys, which included information on 14 health metrics (lung function, grip strength, walking speed, balance and diagnoses of hypertension, diabetes, cancer, lung disease, heart condition, stroke, psychiatric problem, arthritis, dementia and Alzheimer’s) and life purpose. Ordinary and logistic regressions were used to examine the temporal relations between changes in purpose and changes in health over both the same 4-year period and over the subsequent 8 years. Results A decline in health was associated with a 5% standard deviation decline (95% confidence interval −0.08, −0.02) in purpose over the same 4-year period. In contrast, there was no evidence that a decline in purpose was associated with a subsequent decline in health. Conclusions The results fail to support the hypothesis that life purpose causes subsequent morbidity but support the hypothesis that a decline in health causes a decline in purpose. There is little evidence that life-purpose intervention policies will meaningfully impact subsequent morbidity.