The Survival of the Royals

ABSTRACT We study the effect of royal status—a historically rooted legal privilege enjoyed by hereditary monarchs and their families—on human longevity, a proxy of individuals' health capital. We disentangle the effect of royal status that encompassed serving as heads of state from that of other royal family members and compare it to their contemporary countrymen [Correction added on 16 January 2026, after first online publication: This sentence has been updated for clarity in this version]. We have constructed and exploited a dataset containing relevant demographic data and specifically the lifespan (age at death) of European royals and their families spanning the past three centuries (1669–2022) from the sixteen European countries. The dataset includes information records of 845 high‐status nobility and alongside monarchs, which we compare to otherwise similar countrymen by adjusting for relevant confounders. We document robust evidence of a statistically significant longevity advantage, showing that monarchs live, on average, 5.2 to 7.1 years longer than both other members of the royal family and the general population of their time. However, while such longevity advantage between royals and the population has narrowed, the advantage of ruling monarchs persists over time. These effects persist despite improvements in population health, and the role of major sociopolitical transformations including the emergence of both liberal democracy and the advent of Constitutional monarchies in Europe. The latter suggests that “power status” ‐ and specifically the so‐called eustress or positive stress ‐ may be driving the longevity advantage of ruling monarchs.