Younger Achievement Age Predicts Shorter Life for Governors: Testing the Precocity-Longevity Hypothesis With Artifact Controls

Abstract

McCann’s precocity-longevity hypothesis suggests that the prerequisites, concomitants, and consequences of early peaks in career achievement may foster the conditions for premature death. In the present test of the precocity-longevity hypothesis, it was predicted that state governors elected at younger ages live shorter lives. Two competing explanatory frameworks, the life expectancy artifact and the selection bias artifact, also were tested. In a sample of 1,672 male governors, the precocity-longevity prediction was supported, and it was demonstrated with correlation, regression, and subsample construction strategies that the life expectancy and selection bias artifacts were not sufficient to account or the significant positive correlation between election age and death age. The positive correlation also was maintained when year of birth, years of service, span of service, and state of election were statistically controlled.