Wealth shapes both how long we live and how long we live in good health.

Shared resources, routine, community, and purpose may help explain the longevity and equality of monks.

A life organised around purpose and belonging can be rich without wealth, comparison, or competition.

Recently, I decided to reach out to a childhood friend. We hadn’t spoken in 25 years.

He wasn’t just any childhood friend. We were born on the same day, in the same town, one hour apart. We used to joke that we were twins from different mothers.

Over the years, he became a Trappist monk: a strict kind of monk who practises deep silence and speaks only when necessary. I write him long, flowing letters; he replies laconically, but touchingly.

His life is austere. Every morning, he wakes up at 3:30 to pray. And yet I find myself envying something in it: its simplicity, its mindfulness, and its constant, if mostly silent, companionship.

My twin brother got me thinking about the monastic life. As I researched, I found something astonishing: If you are poor and uneducated, you may enjoy the same health outcomes and life expectancy as the richest and most educated—simply by becoming a monk or nun.

This remarkable fact ought to be better known, and probably would be if it did not sit so uneasily with our cut-throat consumerist society.

The Price of Inequality

A major American study found that, at age 40, the richest 1........

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