Psychological well-being, education, and mortality.

Objectives: Research on older adults often focuses on mitigating health risks, and less is known about protective factors that contribute to longer, healthier lives. We examine longitudinal associations between psychological well-being and mortality among a national sample of older adults and test competing hypotheses about whether the education/mortality association depends on the level of psychological well-being.

Method: We use six waves (2006-2016) of the Health and Retirement Study, a national sample of adults over age 50 ( = 21,172), with 14 years of mortality follow-up.