A Surprising Secret to a Long Life: Stay in School

This article takes a look at what does and does not impact health. I think it makes a lot of sense to focus on improving health rather than health care. Surprisingly extra money does not lead to better health and genes don't have much impact on longevity but extra education and social isolation do.

The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income. And, health economists say, those factors that are popularly believed to be crucial — money and health insurance, for example, pale in comparison.

Dr. Smith explains: “Giving people more Social Security income, or less for that matter, will not really affect people’s health. It is a good thing to do for other reasons but not for health.”

Instead, Dr. Smith and others say, what may make the biggest difference is keeping young people in school. A few extra years of school is associated with extra years of life and vastly improved health decades later, in old age.

It was 1999 and a Columbia University graduate student, Adriana Lleras-Muney, was casting about for a topic for her doctoral dissertation in economics. She found an idea in a paper published in 1969. Three economists noted the correlation between education and health and gave some advice: If you want to improve health, you will get more return by investing in education than by investing in medical care.

It turned out that life expectancy at age 35 was extended by as much as one and a half years simply by going to school for one extra year.

Now, others papers have appeared, examining the effects of changed laws on compulsory education in Sweden, Denmark, England and Wales. In every country, compelling children to spend a longer time in school led to better health.

Amazing that education gives a greater return on investment to improve health than medical care.

Why is this?

Dr. Lleras-Muney and others point to one plausible explanation — as a group, less educated people are less able to plan for the future and to delay gratification. If true, that may, for example, explain the differences in smoking rates between more educated people and less educated ones.

He deplores the dictums to live in the moment or to live for today. That advice, Dr. Smith says, is “the worst thing for your health.”

Interesting. This goes along with the Marshmallow Experiment and the idea that skills like delayed gratification should be taught in schools if they aren't taught at home.

What else besides education impacts health?

The risks of being socially isolated are “phenomenal,” Dr. Berkman says, associated with twofold to fivefold increases in mortality rates.

Dr. Smith also asked whether getting richer made people healthier, an effect that could translate into a longer life. It does not, he concluded after studying the large increases in income during the stock market surge of the 1990s.

Health and nutrition early in life, even prenatally, can affect health in middle and old age and can affect how long people live.

For the most part, genes have little effect on life spans. Controlling heart disease risk factors, like smoking, cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes, pays off in a more vigorous old age and a longer life.

I would like to understand more about how they came to the conclusion that genes have little impact on life spans. This is counter to other research I have heard of.

While health and wealth are correlated, the direction goes from health to wealth and not the other way around.

If someone developed cancer, heart disease or lung disease — which will affect about a fifth of people aged 51 to 61 over the next eight years — the household’s income declined by an average of more than $37,000. And its assets — its wealth — fell by $49,000 over the ensuing eight years, even though out-of-pocket medical expenses were just $4,000.

I would like to see more research into "health assets" or some way of measuring the aggregate health of Americans in comparison to the total wealth in stocks, bonds and real estate. Seems like there are lots of investments in health that would give a higher return on investment, but without being able to quantify it, it is hard to compare that with investing in stocks. If you have a chance to be an investment banker which allows you to accumulate a lot of wealth but also leads to stress and decreased health, it would be good to be able to quantify that loss of health wealth. Or all the soldiers that are being wounded in Iraq. They are obviously losing health assets, but how much? Or pollution that is being spewed by coal power plants. How much are these decreasing the health assets of people living around them. From the analysis here, a 50 yr old that will get one of these diseases has $50,000 less in wealth than a health individual, but this wouldn't show up on any financial wealth estimates of the two people.

Some really interesting ideas in this article, and there are also a couple of graphs on education and health statistics.

via NY Times