Do Women Who Win Academy Award Live Longer Than Average?

Do you think that winning an Academy Award causes women to end up living longer than average lifespans? To answer that question I've gone through all the women who won the Academy Award for Best Actress and calculated out the average lifespan. 

I used just the women who have won the Best Actress Academy Award who have passed away, plus I also included Olivia de Havilland who is 101 and still alive. I did not include women like Katherine Hepburn who won the award multiple times more than once. 

In total, there are 30 women who have won the Oscar for Best Actress award and passed away, plus Olivia de Havilland brings the total to 31 women in the study. Do you think these 31 women lived longer than average lifespans for a woman due to winning an Academy Award?

In theory, winning such a prestigious award should give a woman a huge boost in her life and help her to live a longer lifespan. Winning an Academy Award also gives a woman a huge career boost and virtually assures she will be richer in her life than the average woman.

Does all that add up to a longer lifespan? The answer is surprisingly no.

Do Women Who Win Academy Award Live Longer Than Average?

• Average lifespan of a woman in the United States is 81.6 years

• Average lifespan of a Best Actress Academy Award winner is 78.9 years

The 31 women in the study who won the Academy Award only lived to an average age of 78.9 years vs the 81.6 years average life expectancy of a woman in the United States today. That's a full 2.5 years less than the average woman for the Academy Award winners.

A few notes. Life expectancy for women in the United States has risen over the years and many of the women actresses in the study died when life spans for women were shorter. But survivor-ship bias is also in effect here as all the women who won the Academy Award survived into adulthood while some females in the overall life expectancy age of 81.6 years did not. Some female babies and girls do not reach adulthood while all the women Academy Award winners did.

For the women in the study I rounded off their ages. If a woman was 80 years and 180 days old I counted her age as 80. If a woman was 80 years and 185 days old I counted her age as 81.

The oldest age a woman who won the Best Actress Academy Award passed away at is 105 years for Louise Rainer. The youngest age a woman who won the award passed away at is 44 years for Judy Holliday.

The results of this study are pretty clear. Winning the Academy Award for Best Actress does not increase the average lifespan of a woman who wins the Oscar.