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Lower-income workers are less likely to report engaging in behaviors that could maximize their post-retirement health than higher-income workers are.
Analysts at the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies have published data on workers' health-related activity in a report on the results of a survey of 5,726 U.S. adults with a household income between $50,000 and $199,999.
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Many of the survey questions are related to employees' financial wellbeing. One was about how often the survey participants engaged in 15 health-related activities, such as "eating healthy," "exercising regularly," "getting enough sleep" and "seeking medical attention when needed.
For participants with a household income of $100,000 to $199,999, the average percentage who said they engaged in the health-related activities was 45.1%.
For the participants with a household income under $100,000, the average reported level of participation in the health-related activities was just 42.6%, or 2.5 percentage points lower.
The gap means that the average reported health-related participation rate was 5.6% higher for the higher-income workers in the sample than for the lower-income participants.
The gap was biggest — 6 percentage points — for "eating healthy" and "exercising regularly."
Lower-income workers never reported a higher participation level for any health-related activity.
Lower-income workers and higher-income workers reported the same 52% participation rate for "seeking medical attention when needed."
What it means
If health is wealth, lower-income may be leaving that kind of wellness money on the table.
But, if the wellness gap contributes to a post-retirement longevity gap, it may also hold down lower-income workers' life expectancy and those workers' overall post-retirement income needs.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
