Study: Higher education can help you live longer

A study published July 8 in the scientific journal PLOS ONE that found people who receive higher education outlive those who do not. What’s more, it also found that failing to obtain a high education could be as detrimental to a person’s life as smoking cigarettes.

The authors of the study include professors and research associates from the University of Colorado-Denver, New York University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. This includes Patrick Krueger, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Health and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado-Denver’s Anschutz Medical Campus and a member of the research faculty at the Institute of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Compared to other measures of socioeconomic status — such as income, wealth and occupation — Krueger said education is the best way to compare such a status to mortality because of its ability to stay the same over time.

RELATED: Study: More than 33% of undergrads transfer college at least once

“Education has received renewed attention by researchers, because it endures throughout the life course and is amenable to policy intervention,” Krueger said in an email. “Annual income can change a lot from year to year. Although most individuals support policies to improve schools and to make education more accessible, changing the distribution of income and wealth is more controversial.

Another contributor to the study is Virginia Chang. Chang, an associate professor of public health at New York University and of population health at NYU School of Medicine, said education improves a person’s life in more ways than one -- many of which are often unconsidered.

“[Education] also affects your social network, your access to information, your ability to understand information,” Chang said. “People with higher education feel like they have more agency and self-efficacy; they have more cognitive skills to manage any sort of complicated situation, to navigate the health care system; they have more social support.”

In order to compare mortality to education, the study, titled “Mortality Attributable to Low Levels of Education in the United States,” used data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the American Community Study (ACS).

The authors organized the study by separating the mortality data into three categories based on different levels of education: those who received a high school degree versus those who did not, those who received a baccalaureate degree versus those who only received some college education and those who received a baccalaureate degree versus those who have anything less than a baccalaureate degree.

RELATED: Stanford University study says spending time in nature benefits mental health

The research team collected data on more than one million people, ages 25 to 85, from an NHIS survey conducted from 1986 to 2004.

The data from this survey was linked to prospective mortality through the Linked Mortality File, which the NHIS constructed using data collected between 1986 and 2004 as well as death certificate data collected from the National Death Index (NDI). Along with the NDI, the Linked Mortality File also included mortality information from the Social Security Administration and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The researchers looked at people born in 1925, 1935 and 1945 to see how varying levels of education affected mortality over time.

The finding from the study that impressed researchers the most? Failing to graduate high school, they found, affected a person’s mortality to a comparable extent that smoking does.

“We found that over 145,000 lives could be saved if all of the adults aged 25 to 85 who don't have a high school degree, went on to get a high school degree or equivalent,” Krueger said. “That alone accounts for about 10% of all deaths in the U.S. each year.”

It’s worth noting, however, that the researchers identified variables that could account for discrepancies in their data. For example, the team said its estimates of the number of deaths that can be attributed to low education could be inflated due to certain confounding variables. What’s more, the study did not consider if and how the quality of schooling changed over time and did not take various geographical areas into consideration.

In the study, the researchers found that 110,068 deaths in 2010 could have been prevented if adults who went to college for a time, but did not graduate, had earned their degrees.

It also found that educational disparities in mortality have been increasing. For example, more deaths were associated with a lack of higher education in 1945 than in 1925.

This finding, among others, makes this study unique. Three previous studies comparing mortality attributable to low education were published, but none looked at how that trend has changed over time.

Chang credits the growing gap between mortality and education to new health benefits. When these benefits arise, she said, people with a higher level of education are generally the ones who will see them.

“The gap between different levels of education is increasing because as we make progress in certain health areas, such as with cardiovascular disease, people with more education tend to get those benefits first,” she said.

Further, the study found that those who are less likely to pursue additional education benefit more, in terms of mortality, from obtaining a high school or college degree than those who are already likely to earn such degrees.

Both Krueger and Chang believe the results from their study should influence future education and public health policies. The study’s outcome, they said, proves that instilling policies that improve educational attainment could substantially improve survival in terms of the United States’ population

“In public health policy, we usually focus on healthy behaviors. It should also focus on education, which is something more upstream and drives healthy behaviors to begin with,” Chang said. “I think with education policy, they should really think about the health benefits in addition to the usual reasons we advocate for education. Improving education would impact health widely, by resulting in healthier behaviors, higher incomes, stronger cognitive development and more vibrant social connects and psychosocial resources.”

Lea Giotto is a student at the University of Michigan and a summer 2015 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.