We all want to live a long and healthy life, but what helps accomplish this? A recent study found that the years of education a person has makes a big difference - the more years of education, the longer the average life expectancy. By years!
In the large study (involving 3110 US counties), researchers found that life expectancy differed by about 11 years when comparing college graduates versus high school graduates or only some high school.
Life expectancy in the US was highest among college graduates (84.2 years) lower among those with some college education (82.1 years), lower still among those with a high school diploma (77.3 years), and lowest among those with some high school (73.5 years). When combining everyone (all groups), average life expectancy in 2019 was 80.1 years
Also, between 2000 and 2019, life expectancy increased the most for college graduates, less for the next 2 groups, and stayed the same for those without a high school diploma. Females also had a longer life expectancy than males in all groups, with the biggest difference in the high school groups (about 5.6 to 5.8 years), and the least among college graduates (3.1 years).
From Medical Xpress: US college graduates live an average of 11 years longer than those who never finish high school, study finds
Across more than 3,000 US counties, vast geographic differences with a widening gap were registered between the least and most educated, with a longer lifespan for those with a higher level of education. That's according to the latest analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington's School of Medicine that was published in The Lancet Public Health.
The research found that the gap between the most and least educated was substantial and has increased over time, from eight years in 2000 to nearly 11 years in 2019. College graduates increased their lifespans by 2.5 years to 84.2 years.
Those who completed some college increased their life expectancy (LE) by 0.7 years to 82.1 years. In contrast, high school graduates increased their lifespans by 0.3 years to 77.3 years, and those without a high school diploma saw no improvement in their LE, which remained 73.5 years.
"In the US, more formal education often translates to better employment opportunities, including higher-paying jobs that have fewer health risks," said the study's senior author and IHME Associate Professor Laura Dwyer-Lindgren.
For all education groups combined, lifespans ranged from 68.2 to 93.2 years across counties. The variation across counties was largest for those who didn't finish high school at 57.9 to 90.1 years, a difference of 32.2 years. The range across counties was smallest for college graduates at 75.2 to 93.9 years, a difference of 18.7 years.
The disparities in LE across educational attainment populations and counties are large even on a global scale. For example, if US college graduates were a country, their life expectancy would have ranked fourth (out of 199 countries) globally in 2019. In contrast, those with less than a high school degree would have ranked 137th.
Geographic disparities were large within and across levels of education. Counties in the Southeast, parts of Appalachia, and parts of South Dakota had relatively low LE, especially among those who didn't finish high school.
High school graduates in parts of Virginia and the Carolinas, as well as parts of Texas, Louisiana, and Nebraska also experienced notably larger declines than most other counties. For those without a high school diploma, declines were especially large in parts of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia.
However, those who did not finish high school in California had large increases in LE while many other counties had declines. This may be related to the state's large immigrant population. Immigrants often have longer life expectancy than their US-born counterparts, likely in large part due to the factors that shape who is able to immigrate to the US.