Turns out, blood may make us related, but friends really are the family we choose. A new research by a Michigan State University scholar showed that the power of friendship gets stronger with age and may even be more important than family relationships.
In a pair of studies involving nearly 2,80,000 people, William Chopik found that friendships become increasingly important to one's happiness and health across the lifespan. Not only that, but in older adults, friendships are actually a stronger predictor of health and happiness than relationships with family members.
For the first study, Chopik analyzed survey information about relationships and self-rated health and happiness from 271,053 participants of all ages from nearly 100 countries. The second study looked at data from a separate survey about relationship support/strain and chronic illness from 7,481 older adults in the United States. The study appears in the journal — Personal Relationships.