According to the first comprehensive study linking education to longevity benefits, every year spent in school or university increases our life expectancy, whereas not attending school is as harmful as smoking or excessive drinking.
Using information from industrialized countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as emerging countries such as China and Brazil, the review discovered that an adult’s risk of mortality decreased by 2% for each year of full-time study.
A peer-reviewed analysis published in The Lancet Public Health journal found that completing primary, secondary, and postsecondary education is equivalent to a lifetime of healthy eating, cutting the risk of death by 34% compared to those without formal education.
At the other extreme, not attending school at all was as harmful to adult health as drinking five or more alcoholic beverages per day or smoking ten cigarettes per day for a decade.
The study boosts efforts in England to help children stay in school, with experts claiming the findings highlight links between school attendance and health.
It also means that rising school-leaving ages and a growing proportion of young people continuing their education could add years to future life expectancy.
While the benefits of education on life expectancy have long been recognized, academics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the University of Washington in Seattle conducted the first study to calculate the number of years of education and its relationship to mortality reduction.
Neil Davies, a professor of medical statistics at University College London and a specialist on the relationships between education and health who was not involved in the study, characterized it as “an impressive piece of work”.
However, Davies noted that previous relationships may change, given the UK’s recent rise in higher education and other factors such as the drop in smoking rates, which are now comparable across graduates and non-graduates.
Higher rates of school absence may also result in youngsters missing out on future health benefits, according to Davies.
“The association between time spent in education and earnings has been extensively examined and is very robust. This is expected to worsen for more disadvantaged students.
“Quite honestly, the links between education and mortality are the least of our worries about the increased rates of school absence – the labour market consequences are likely to be worse.”
The researchers stated that the meta-analysis, which was supported by the Norwegian government’s research fund and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provided “compelling evidence” in favor of increased investment in education as a means of reducing worldwide mortality rates inequities.
“Education is important in its own right, not just for its health benefits, but being able to quantify the magnitude of this benefit is a significant development,” said the study’s co-author, Dr Terje Andreas Eikemo from NTNU.
The study also found that advances in longevity were similar in rich and poor countries, regardless of gender, socioeconomic class, or demography.
David Finch, an assistant director of the Health Foundation who has studied life expectancy as part of its healthy lives team, stated: “We have really big inequalities in the UK; the gap in life expectancy between the least and most deprived areas in England is 9.4 years for men and 7.7 years for women, and it isn’t surprising that you see a significant difference when comparing by qualification level.
“So it’s not surprising in that sense but it’s really interesting to see it quantified.”
Finch stated that higher levels of education increased life expectancy in a variety of ways, including “soft,” non-financial rewards.
“It helps you make greater social ties. It improves your ability to access and interpret information that can help you make better decisions, whether they are financial or what you choose to do and participate in,” Finch said.
“It might make you feel more empowered and valued. These are slightly softer yet really vital things that can benefit people.
“A key channel is through which education leads to higher lifetime earnings and that itself in turn helps you to access lots of other things that are really important, like better quality of housing, a better diet.”
According to Finch, whether persons who spend more time in education will continue to enjoy a longer lifespan is dependent on whether benefits are maintained.
“Will that translate into better standards of living over their lifetimes, in the future? That’s where there is a question: can people access affordable housing? Are young people’s career earnings trajectories what they were for people 30 or 40 years ago, at the same age? The prospects aren’t as rosy,” Finch said.
