A 2004 study published in Demographic Research compared life expectancy for LDS and non-LDS residents of Utah — the same state, the same healthcare system, the same environment.
LDS males lived 7.3 years longer. LDS females lived 5.8 years longer. Tobacco use explained approximately 1.5 years of the male gap. The remaining 5.8 years comes from other factors: the theology, the community structure, the health practices, the family stability. This is a neighbor-to-neighbor comparison that controls for geography.
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