Having Lots of Children Increases Longevity for Men

HealthDay reports that farming and fatherhood help men live to 100 years old. In a widely-circulated report (I found it on the front page of Yahoo!), the ideal candidate to reach the age of 100 is “a young, trim farmer with four or more children”. While the farming and being fit may not surprise most people, even the authors of the study were caught off-guard by the finding about 4+ children.

“We were surprised that having more than three children is beneficial to longevity — based on previous studies by other authors, and common sense, quite the opposite could be expected,” said study co-author Leonid Gavrilov, who conducted the study with his wife, Natalia Gavrilov, both of the University of Chicago’s Center on Aging.