Measuring bookworms

Here’s a news item: A recent study performed by Yale says there’s a correlation between reading books and living longer. The study looked at self-reported data from 3,635 people who were over 50 years of age, then it tallied their mortality rates over the following 12 years. Once various adjustments were made to the statistics, the result was that book-readers had a mortality rate 20 percent lower than the non-book readers.

I haven’t read the study, just the abstract of it. We’ll have to see if similar studies come along.

In the meantime, don’t ask me if reading books can actually make you live longer. I’ve got no idea. It is, however, something worth pondering, since it’s in that murky realm where mind meets body.

Me, I’ll ponder it by looking through the other side of the telescope. Assuming, once you account for all the other factors, that there is link between longevity and book reading, maybe the sort of curiosity and sense of engagement that keeps someone’s vitality stoked also manifests in a desire to read books. In other words, maybe book reading could be the result of some healthy force, and not the cause of it.

Of course, few of scientific mind are likely to acknowledge anything as vague and intangible as some sort of “healthy force,” at least in the West. Having contemplated this idea, then, we’ll just put it back on the shelf and calmly walk away before somebody yells at us.

If you’re looking for a book you don’t lack options. The U.S. book publishing industry is a $30-billion industry. Last year, according to data posted by Nielsen, 653 million books were sold in print format.

Meanwhile, 204 million e-books were sold, as compared to the e-book peak of 242 million books sold in 2013. This e-book data encompasses 85 percent of e-book sales activity, says Nielsen.

You’ll note that e-book sales have been softened since 2013. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that it’s likely do to the flood of inexpensive e-book readers hitting the market a couple of years ago. This probably induced a spike in demand for e-books, but eventually some of those devices were likely relegated to closets and desk drawers after the novelty wore off. E-books require a complimentary good, namely, a device on which to read the book. It’s a peanut-butter-and-jelly dynamic, where the availability of peanut butter influences the demand for jelly.

So a short-term softening of e-book sales doesn’t mean the long term is lousy. The long term is probably very bright. It’s merely the nature of complementary goods to do a lot of zigging and zagging.

Since I’m geeking out on economics here, I’ll note that an interesting issue is to what extent e-books are substitutes for print books. The only way that this can be figured out is by trial and error as publishers adjust prices and strategies and the market reacts.

Anyway, if bookworms might live longer, it made me wonder just how long people, bookworms or otherwise, can expect to live these days.

According to data posted at InfoPlease.com, average life expectancy at birth is 85 years for Japan, Macau, and Singapore.

The U.S. is 80 years, as are the European Union, South Korea, and Taiwan. Guam is 79 years, and the Northern Mariana Islands stand at 78 years. The Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia are both at 73 years. The Philippines is 70 years.

The nation with the highest life expectancy is Monaco, at 90 years. The lowest is Chad at 50 years. There are 26 nations with a life expectancy under 60 years.

The results for life expectancy vary widely by source, so if you’re planning to underwrite any life insurance policies you’ve got a lot of homework to do.

Looking back at the bookworm context, I don’t know nearly enough people to have a statistically meaningful sample to draw on, but I tried to puzzle out the longevity, or lack thereof, of the book readers I know vs. the non-book readers. I can’t see any correlation.

Me, I do like reading, but many great minds have been cautionary about being too bookish.

For example, the Roman stoic, Seneca, said: “A multitude of books only gets in ones way.”

Where did I encounter that 2,000-year-old wisdom? In a book, of course.