PURPOSE IN LIFE AMONG CENTENARIAN OFFSPRING

Purpose in life (PIL), a feeling of meaning and direction in life, is associated with favorable health outcomes including lower mortality and reduced risk of disease, disability, and cognitive impairment. Since centenarian offspring have been shown to have longer health spans we sought to examine whether they have higher PIL than the general population. We compared scores from the Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-Being in New England Centenarian Study offspring (N=296, mean age=81.6 years) with a Health and Retirement Study referent group (N=4916, mean age=70.4 years). Regression analyses adjusted for age, sex, education, and marital status indicated higher PIL scores (p< .001) among centenarian offspring than referents, although, this difference decreased with age. This indicates that PIL is associated with the ability to delay age-associated illnesses and functional decline. PIL and its association and interaction with other psychosocial variables and health behaviors should be further investigated in this cohort.