A new study has found a link between religion and long life.
After analysing 1,000 obituaries published across the United States, researchers have found that religious people live close to four years more than atheists.
The team believes the reason may be because people with religious affiliations tend to do more social activities, which has been found to increase lifespan.
"There's still a lot of the benefit of religious affiliation that this can't explain," lead author of the study Laura Wallace, a doctoral student in psychology at The Ohio State University, told the Daily Mail.
"The study provides persuasive evidence that there is a relationship between religious participation and how long a person lives," co-author Dr Baldwin Way, associate professor of psychology at Ohio State, told the Daily Mail.
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that shows religion does have a positive effect on health.
The study was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
