Longevity Linked to Education, Study Suggests

March 12, 2008 — -- Want to live a long life? Stay in school.

At least that's the implication of a new study from Harvard University. The study found a "stunning" correlation between the longer lifespan of people with at least one year of college compared to people with a high school education or less, according to David Cutler, dean of social sciences at Harvard. And the gap is growing.

Cutler and Ellen Meara, assistant professor of health care policy at the Harvard Medical School, report on their research in the current issue of the journal Health Affairs. They found that persons with at least one year of college increased their lifespan by nearly a year and a half from 1980 to 1990. But those with a high school diploma or less gained only about six months.

From 1990 to 2000, the more educated gained an additional 1.6 years of expected lifespan, while the less-educated remained flat. That trend persisted for blacks and whites, males and females, with some slight deviations.

In an interview, Cutler compared the findings to the perception that a "rising tide lifts all boats. What we've done here is find that a rising tide lifts only half the boats."

So going to college means you're really going to live longer? Not in and of itself. What the study really suggests is that more education contributes to a different life style in which persons are less likely to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior.

Education, Cutler said in a telephone interview, changes the way we see the world, and ourselves.

"It changes how people approach things, cognitively, how much they trust science," he said. So the teacher who tries to convince students that it's important to learn math and appreciate fine art and hone a skill is doing more than simply educating. What's involved here is a change in life.

But what's killing people isn't a lack of education. It's such fundamental issues as smoking, obesity and inactivity. And all those things are reflected in the level of education.

"Smoking among the better educated people is very low, very frowned upon," he said. "But we have not done the same thing for the less educated. That's the big thing that's really killing us."