Studies Show That People Who Read Books Actually Live Longer

Researchers at Yale School of Public Health have discovered that reading, does in fact, add years to your life. It doesn't matter whether you crack open a hard-cover novella, or swipe through the latest celeb tell-all on your Kindle, either way, your habit will add 2 years to your life.

The Social Science and Medicine Journal published the study, and found that those who read for at most 3.5 hours per week, or as little as 30 minutes per day, were statistically more likely to live longer than those who engaged in other forms of leisure. By how much, exactly? Well, if you read for 30 minutes or more per day, you're looking at a 17% decrease in your likelihood of dying, at least in the 12-year period that researchers followed these readers' health.

But wait, isn't this story biased because the average reader is female, college-educated, generally of a medium to high socioeconomic status? Taking this into account, researchers made sure to control for these factors, as well as age, race, self-reported physical and emotional health, employment and marriage status.

Want to live even longer? Those who read for 30 minutes per day minimum end up living as much as 23% longer, than their non-reading peers. It turns out that breaking that 30-minute block can  give you an additional 6% immunity from death (or at least prolong your life) and doesn't show signs of adding years much beyond the 30-minutes-per-day mark.

This begs the question again, does it really not matter what you're reading? Is a comic really going to have the same effect as a Shakespearian novel? It turns out that the subject may not matter, as much as the length. Chapter books or novels are more likely to correlate with a longer life, than, say, newspapers, magazines and periodicals. Newspapers and periodicals still have a positive impact on prolonging life, but not to the extent that more in-depth works have been shown to have.

Some could argue: why are people who read living longer, considering its sedentary nature? Well, another item worthy of consideration is that a reader may be more of a homebody, and thus, out of harm's way, and less likely to engage in risky behaviors that compromise one's lifespan.