Why Education Matters to Health: Exploring the Causes
Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Society and Health (2014)
The links between education and health are complex and intertwined with income and the “geography of opportunity” where people live. This policy brief explores three connections: 1) How education creates opportunities for better health; 2) How poor health puts educational attainment at risk; and 3) How living conditions – especially beginning in early childhood – affect both health and education. The report is the second of a four-part series sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Differences In Life Expectancy Due To Race And Educational Differences Are Widening, And Many May Not Catch Up
S. Jay Olshansky & others, Health Affairs (2012)
From 1990 to 2008, the disparity in life expectancy between the most and least educated increased from 7.7 years to 10.3 years for women, and from 13.4 years to 14.2 years for men. Adults with fewer than 12 years of education now have life expectancies not much better than those of the overall U.S. population in the 1950s. The authors say the message for policy makers is clear: “Implement educational enhancements at young, middle, and older ages for people of all races, to reduce the large gap in health and longevity that persists today.”
The Increasing Value of Education to Health
Dana Goldman and James P. Smith, Soc Sci Med (2011)
The health benefits associated with additional schooling have risen in recent decades by more than 10 percentage points, as measured by self-reported health status in this national study (limited to non-Hispanic whites). The gap has widened both in the likelihood of developing a chronic disease and in the health outcomes of those who become ill. “We need a better understanding of what the barriers are that make it more difficult for the less educated to invest in their health and benefit equally from the health enhancing improvements,” the authors conclude. “Without waiting for that understanding, we need to find remedies that compensate for deteriorating relative health outcomes of the most disadvantaged.”
Widening Educational Disparities in Premature Death Rates in Twenty Six States in the United States, 1993–2007
Jiemin Ma, Jiaquan Xu, Robert N. Anderson, and Ahmedin Jemal PLoS One (2012)
From 1993 through 2007, relative educational disparities in all-cause mortality continued to increase among working-aged men and women in the U.S., due to larger decreases of mortality rates among the most educated coupled with smaller decreases or even worsening trends in the less educated. For example, all-cause mortality in women with ≤12 years of education increased by 0.9 percent from 1993–2007.
The Gap Gets Bigger: Changes In Mortality And Life Expectancy, By Education, 1981-2000
E. R. Meara; Health Affairs (2008)
Since 1980, life expectancy has changed very little among the less-educated and virtually all gains in life expectancy occurred among highly educated groups.
Giving everyone the health of the educated: an examination of whether social change would save more lives than medical advances
Steven H. Woolf, M.D., M.P.H.; Robert E. Johnson, Ph.D.; Robert L. Phillips Jr., M.D., M.S.P.H.; and Maike Philipsen, Ph.D.; American Journal of Public Health (2007)
Argues that social changes to reduce education disparities would save more lives than would society’s heavy investment in medical advances.