Though death is a guarantee in life, most people don’t want to know when or how that will come about. I know I sure don’t. But one thing I would like to know is what specific factors contribute to a healthy, “thriving” life once retirement comes around. Well, some Portland State University researchers just may have an answer to that question after completing their 10-year study.

Ten years ago, researchers from Portland State University embarked on a study that was the first of its kind, one that attempted to highlight what specific activities contribute to a person’s thriving in their retirement years. What made their study “the first of its kind,” as the study’s lead researcher put it, was that it highlights what to do, as opposed to the laundry list of other studies that show what activities not to do.

The PSU researchers surveyed 2,500 Canadian retirees and asked them to complete a very in-depth survey they filled out every other year, starting in 1994 and ending in 2004. The questions involved questioning their health habits from day to day, their own assessment of their eyesight, hearing, mobility and emotional state (among other assessments) as well as an indication of how much money they made in their working years.

Based on the participants’ answers and how their health increased or decreased in the 10-year study period, the researchers identified several predictors of “thriving” or “non-thriving” people in their older years. The predictors included moderate drinking, a lack of smoking, an optimistic outlook on life, low stress levels, no chronic illnesses and an income of over $30,000.

The people considered “thriving” wasn’t a static designation. In other words, in the intervening 10-year period, half of the respondents were considered “thriving,” but that rate steadily dropped off to a mere 8 percent by the end of the study in 2004. The fact that many of the once thriving died or were institutionalized (36 percent died, 9 percent institutionalized) enabled the researchers to better determine what habits furthered or diminished their longevity.

As lead researcher Mark Kaplan says, these findings aren’t exactly mind-blowing or shocking, but they do identify what kinds of activities and lifestyle habits retirees might consider when determining just how “thriving” they are.

The one lagging indicator of this survey that I can see is the fact that the participants were asked to assess their own health when it came to hearing, seeing and speech, among other things. This is an insufficient indicator because one person might believe their hearing to be in good shape, while a doctor’s more objective assessment would say otherwise. Hopefully, the participants were going by their doctors’ assessments when determining their various health conditions.

I still trust the researchers’ conclusions, primarily because they must have seen, addressed and rectified these shortcomings in the 10-year study period.

As Kaplan himself says, the findings are common sense – live healthfully and you’ll be better off later in life. But it can’t be that commonsensical. If it were, there wouldn’t have been such a high number of non-thriving people in the sample (47 percent considered “non-thrivers” by the study’s conclusion).

Either that, or people just don’t care about their health.