A new study offers yet more evidence that higher levels of education are linked to living longer.
Researchers looked at data on more than a million people from 1986 to 2006 to estimate the number of deaths in the United States that could be attributed to low levels of education. They studied people born in 1925, 1935, and 1945 to understand how education levels affected mortality over time, and noted the causes of death, including cardiovascular disease and cancer.
They found that 145,243 deaths could be saved in the 2010 population if adults who had not completed high school went on to earn a GED or high school degree, which is comparable to the estimated number of deaths that could be averted if all current smokers had the mortality rates of former smokers.
