‘Stay in school!’: Study finds link between higher education and improved life expectancy

For many of us waking up early to go to school and college to attend hours-long classes may have been boring and a pain, but as it turns out, it might not all be in vain, as the first systematic study which directly linked education to gains in longevity found that every year we spent studying at an educational institution improved our life expectancy.

What was the study about?

The peer-reviewed analysis published in The Lancet Public Health journal titled ‘Effects of education on adult mortality: A global systematic review and meta-analysis’ on Tuesday (Jan 23) also found that not attending school is as deadly as smoking or heavy drinking.

Notably, the study was published ahead of the International Day of Education. The United Nation’s cultural agency, UNESCO, says that the day is celebrated to highlight the crucial role education and teachers play in countering hate speech, which today has snowballed with the use of social media and is damaging the fabric of our society.

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The study reviewed more than 600 articles from 59 countries, both developed and developing and included over 10,000 data points, and found a two per cent reduction in mortality risk with every additional year of school.

Therefore, according to the meta-analysis, if a person has completed primary school, high school, a college degree and a master’s degree they could have up to a 34 per cent reduction in risk of death when compared to someone with no formal education.

On the other hand, if a person has never been to school at any point in their life, it is as bad as consuming five or more alcoholic drinks every day or smoking 10 cigarettes each day for a decade, said the researchers.

Benefits of schooling not just limited to health

The authors of the study, backed by the Norwegian government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, also noted how having access to education increases the ability of a person to build a healthy lifestyle for themselves, given that they have the means to increase the resources available to them, both monetary and social.

“Any education at any point is helpful in reducing mortality risk,” said Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) researcher and co-author of the study Claire Henson, during an interview when asked if the same results applied to a person who dropped out of school early in life and then went back later.

Henson also spoke about how given the findings of the research and the effect of education on life expectancy, “It’s time that policymakers look at investments in education as investments in health.”

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The study also found that improvements to longevity due to education were similar in developed and developing countries, regardless of an individual’s sex, social class and demography.

“Closing the education gap means closing the mortality gap, and we need to interrupt the cycle of poverty and preventable deaths with the help of international commitment,” said Henson, in a statement.

David Finch, an assistant director at the UK-based think tank Health Foundation told the Guardian that higher education also improves life expectancy in different ways, including through “soft,” non-financial benefits.

“It helps you to build better social connections. It makes you better at accessing and understanding information that can help you make better choices.”

(With inputs from agencies)