The lifespan benefit of being elected to the MLB Hall of Fame

There is a clear difference in life expectancy between the rich and the poor (see this post, for example). However, disentangling how much of the life expectancy differential is a causal effect of socioeconomic status on mortality is difficult, because there are so many things that affect both socioeconomic status and mortality. This recent article by Chengyuan Hua and Brad Humphreys (both West Virginia University), published in the journal Economics Letters (sorry, I don't see an ungated version online), takes an interesting approach to answering the question.

Hua and Humphreys look at lifespan of professional baseball players, comparing those that have been elected to the MLB Hall of Fame with those who narrowly missed out on election. The idea is that election to the Hall of Fame increases socioeconomic status, and so comparing those who were elected and those who were not but are otherwise similar, means that the difference attributable just to the change in socioeconomic status can be identified.

In relation to election to the Hall of Fame, Hua and Humphreys note that:

Baseball players elected to the HoF must appear on 75% of the annual ballots cast, get removed from the ballot after appearing on fewer than 5% of ballots, and can only appear on a limited number of consecutive ballots...

The exogenous 75% election threshold permits a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (RDD) to identify the causal effect of HoF election on longevity.

Their dataset:

...includes the universe of candidates eligible for HoF induction from 1936 to 2024. We divide the sample into two groups: a treatment group of 131 players voted into the HoF while alive and a control group of 1067 players nominated by the BBWAA but not inducted.

Comparing the two groups, Hua and Humphreys find that:

...HoF members live 1.97 years longer than HoF nominees.

Hua and Humphreys go on to look at possible mechanisms that might explain the lifespan benefit of Hall of Fame election. They find that:

...HoFers are 5.8 p.p. more likely to become an MLB manager... MLB managers lived 2.86 years longer than their counterparts. We interpret this as evidence that HoFers are more likely to become MLB managers, a high-paying occupation.

In other words, Hua and Humphreys argue that the mechanism is that higher socioeconomic status leads to a better paying occupation, which in turn leads to longer lifespan. Of course, it could be more likely that healthier players are more likely to become managers, so the RDD approach isn't as clean in terms of identifying the mechanism. Nevertheless, it is plausible.

Now, what these results tell us more broadly about socioeconomic status and lifespan is unclear. Baseball players are very different from the general population. The sample here is both unusually affluent and unusually healthy, before we even consider the effect of raising their socioeconomic status. At best, these results tell us something about groups at a similar prior level of affluence and health.

Nevertheless, the implications for professional baseball players are clear. It's Hall of Fame or bust (two years earlier)!