Life expectancy is directly related to education
Lack of education kills no worse than smoking, scientists say
Insufficient or simply poor–quality education turned out to be as life-threatening a factor as smoking - poor final exam results, as statistics show, can shorten a person's life by 10 years, scientists say in an article published in the journal PLoS One (Krueger et al., Mortality Attributed to Low Levels of Education in the United States States).
"Our results show that reforms and other transformations aimed at improving access to education can significantly increase life expectancy among US residents, especially given the growing difference between the most educated and uneducated segments of society. If current trends do not change, then mortality among people with low education will continue to grow," said Patrick Krueger from the University of Colorado at Denver (in a press release, Study estimates number of deaths attributed to low levels of education – VM).
Kruger and his colleagues came to such an unexpected conclusion by comparing statistics on the academic performance of schoolchildren, the quality of their education and how they lived in the following years of life, from 1925 to the present day.
As this comparison showed, the quality and duration of education were directly related to the life expectancy of Americans. For example, people who received excellent grades on final exams lived a little longer than Americans on average, and college and university graduates significantly outperformed them in this indicator.
The reverse situation was observed among people who did not receive a full–fledged secondary education - the worse the grades were, the less they lived on average compared to the norm. In the most neglected cases, when graduates could not even get a certificate, their life expectancy was 10 years less than that of their peers who successfully graduated from school.
The most disturbing discovery was that the growing gap between the most educated and uneducated segments of the population "dragged" mortality along with it. This is reflected in the fact that the difference in average life expectancy between educated and uneducated Americans is growing faster.
This phenomenon, scientists believe, is a serious problem for the United States and other countries of the world, which should be dealt with on a par with tobacco, alcohol and drugs. The potential for prolonging life in this way is huge – as scientists emphasize, about 10% of adults in the United States have not graduated from school, and only 28% have successfully graduated from colleges.
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09.07.2015