87 years of research, one conclusion

The Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed the same people since 1938. After comparing dozens of variables for what makes a life happy and healthy, its director, Robert Waldinger, reduced the finding to one sentence: good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period. Not money, not fame, not cholesterol. An eighty-year-old participant, after losing his wife, said: "Now I know. All I ever had was people."