28
Living near green spaces could add 2.5 years to your life, new research finds
(www.washingtonpost.com)
A community to discuss, appreciate, and advocate for trees and forests. Please follow the SLRPNK instance rules, found here.
It looks like they adjusted for the common cofactors. There could be more they missed, but this study is also backed by a large body of research that found similar effects. You can see some of these other papers in the references.
Probably the effect is driven by several factors including mental well-being, increased social cohesion, reduced air pollution, increased opportunity for exercise, and other things. Frankly, it would be surprising if these things did not have an effect on lifespan.
They did adjust for socioeconomic class very, very broadly, basically by classifying entire neighborhoods as the same SEC. I know that it is incredibly difficult to get really granular, but there are huge gradients of wealth even within the same neighborhood, so it seems presumptive to say "living near green space could add 2.5 years to your life" based on a study that makes generalizations that are that broad.
Exactly. But to say that it's the green space causing these benefits is the thing with which I take issue. And wealth also increases access to all of these resources/benefits.