Low levels of education are quite common in the United States, as well as all over the world. More than 10 percent of the adults between the ages of 25 and 34 who live in U.S do not have a high school degree, and this appears to be influencing their rate of mortality.
An initiative aiming to improve life in the United States was launched by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Its goals are to increase the number of students who complete high school by the year 2020. According to the researchers, meeting these goals can have an enormous impact in increasing people’s survival rates.
Even if it might sound insane, researchers have determined that the lack of higher education can be deadly in certain situations. Yes, physical death can be linked to differences in education.
IS LACK OF higher EDUCATION DEADLY?
According to the team of researchers from the University of Colorado, New York University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who analyzed information on populations from 1925 through 2010, education can influence death rates to a staggering degree – to over one million people between the ages of 25 and 85, the lack of education is as dangerous as smoking cigarettes.
The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE and it also informs us that about 110,000 deaths could have been prevented in 2010 if adults had completed their bachelor’s degree.
WHY CAN PEOPLE WITH HIGHER EDUCATION LIVE longer lives?
People who go to high school and a university may live longer for many reasons. The only reason isn’t that they can have higher income. Their lifestyles are generally healthier, and so is their psychological well-being.
Of course, there is no definitive proof between death and education, but the higher risk of death for less educated people is undeniable. Because of their unawareness, uneducated people are more likely to suffer from a diversity of diseases and their risk of a heart problem is quite higher than expected.
The conclusion researchers offered is supporting the notion that if people who didn’t complete their higher education studies went back to school and got their diplomas, we might save an impressive number of lives.
