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Education Linked To Longevity

A study released in the current issue of Health Affairs Journal found that life expectancy increases in proportion to the level of education a person receives. While life expectancy has increased significantly for educated people over the last 20 years, those whose education did not exceed high school have not been sharing the benefits of a prolonged lifespan.

“We like to think that as we as a country get healthier, everyone benefits,” said David Cutler, co-author of the study and dean for social sciences at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. “Here we’ve found that you can have a rising tide that only lifts half the boats, and the ones lifted are the ones doing better to begin with.” Cutler conducted the study in concert with Ellen Meara, assistant professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. Analysis was based on death certificate data and information from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study.

Comparing the 1980s to the 1990s, better educated individuals experienced nearly a year and half of increased life expectancy, while the less educated experienced only half a year of increase. For 1990-2000, life expectancy rose an additional 1.6 years for better educated people, while remaining fixed for the less educated.

The researchers found that much of the mortality gap can be attributed to smoking related illnesses. Just two percent of the diseases usually caused by smoking (lung cancer and emphysema) account for 20 percent of growing mortality differences in the 1990s. Many other diseases, like heart disease and other types of cancer, are also more common in smokers. Recent surveys confirm that less educated people have not given up smoking to the same extent as those with more education.

Source: Harvard Medical School

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