Estimating the heterogeneous effect of life satisfaction on mortality: A causal machine-learning approach

Life satisfaction has been linked to lower mortality risk, yet the extent to which this relationship varies across population subgroups remains poorly understood.

We used a machine-learning-based causal survival forest to evaluate how the association between life satisfaction and all-cause mortality over an 8-year follow-up differed across individuals and to characterize those who appeared to benefit most from life satisfaction. We leveraged data from the Health and Retirement Study (N = 13,674), a national cohort study of U.S. adults aged 50 and older.

On average, higher life satisfaction was linked to a 3.56-month increase in restricted mean survival time (95% confidence interval = [1.61, 5.52]). While we observed evidence of between-individual heterogeneity in this association, the estimated effect of life satisfaction appeared beneficial for most individuals in this study. Evidence of the protective effect of life satisfaction was more pronounced among those who identified as racial minorities and reported lower educational attainment, fewer economic resources, and poorer prebaseline health.

These findings indicate that population-level strategies to foster higher life satisfaction could improve the health of older adults on average, while decreasing existing disparities in longevity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).