A college education could mean a longer life, study finds
Higher education brings more benefits than just the widening of job opportunities, according to new data by the Centers for Disease Control.
The annual report on health statistics showed that lifestyle decisions and physical well-being were linked to education level. For example, only 9 percent of adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher smoked, while one-third of U.S. adults with a high school diploma or lower were cigarette smokers. Twenty-four percent of adults with some level of college education reported being smokers. When it came to obesity, women aged 25 or older without a degree were more likely to be overweight than their college-educated counterparts.
Longer life expectancy was also linked to education attainment in the latest CDC data. Women who were college-educated had a life expectancy that was reportedly 8.6 years longer than their noncollege-educated peers. That figure rose by 2.8 percent between 1996 and 2006. For men, longevity was 9.3 years longer for college-educated men compared to their nondegree-holding counterparts, and that number increased 1.9 percent during the same time period.
A correlation exists between children’s health habits and parental education attainment. Children were less likely to be obese if their parents were college-educated, with 11 percent of boys and 7 percent of girls being obese in households with degree-holding parents. Meanwhile, 24 percent of boys and 22 percent of girls were obese in homes that were headed by parents without a college education.
