Lack of education can knock 10 years off a person's lifespan, making it as deadly as smoking, researchers have found.
According to researcher at the University of Colorado, leaving school without decent GCSEs or A levels left people at risk from a life time of poor diet, long manual working hours as well as deteriorating mental health.
Going back to 1925, the researchers examined population data in the United States in order to determine how education levels affected mortality over time.
Study co-author Dr Patrick Krueger, assistant professor in the Department of Health & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver said, "Our results suggest that policies and interventions that improve educational attainment could substantially improve survival in the U.S. population, especially given widening educational disparities."
"Unless these trends change, the mortality attributable to low education will continue to increase in the future," Dr Patrick Krueger added.
Nearly 6,000 pupils a year fail to achieve any qualifications, while around 47,000 gain fewer than GCSEs. The researchers claim that thousands of lives could be saved by ensuring better education, The Telegraph noted.
The new study published Wednesday, July 8 in the journal PLOS ONE emphasizes on getting good education as lack of education could be just as dangerous to an individual's health as smoking.
After calculating the health risks of low educational attainment in the United States, the authors of the study found that over 145,000 deaths could have been prevented in 2010 if adults who did not finish high school had earned a GED or high school diploma.
This is comparable to the mortality rates of smoking, according to the records on Washington Post.
Moreover, another 110,000 deaths back in 2010 could have been saved only if people who had some college completed their degree. The death counts are an estimation of education's impact on mortality and do not point to direct causality.
Factors such as childhood health or genetic predispositions are not accounted for to increase the counts. Nevertheless, it is the same method used to calculate deaths associated with smoking and diet behaviors, so the numbers are comparable.
"As a scientist, the onus is on the researchers to demonstrate causality," Dr Patrick Krueger said. "Our paper doesn't look at causality directly, but we rest on previous studies."
"In public health policy, we often focus on changing health behaviors such as diet, smoking, and drinking," said study co-author Virginia Chang, associate professor of public health at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and College of Global Public Health.
"Education - which is a more fundamental, upstream driver of health behaviors and disparities - should also be a key element of U.S. health policy," Chang added.
The study points out that there have been scores of papers published that establish the fact that poor education can lead to riskier behaviors, deficient health care, poor nutrition as well as poor housing and working conditions. This further leads to increased stress levels, affecting things like the immune system and cardiovascular health.
Though it is a complicated association, Krueger says the evidence is strong enough to confirm that there is indeed a strong inverse relationship between educational attainment and adult mortality.
Basically, a better education translates to higher quality of life.
