Education is good for you and we all get some
even if it is at the hands of our parents and peer group. In general we expect
the population to go to school, learn lots of good stuff and then make a good
living with that knowledge so that we can all enjoy the good life.
Way
back in the last century, the Swedish government decided to run an experiment
to see if education and the subsequent mortality of the student could be
causally linked. So for the years 1949 to 1962, the government picked out
students in a large number of places to get an extra year of compulsory school time,or not. They had to
have controls.
They
have had a long wait for the results to come in and finally, Lager and
Torssander have crunched the numbers and reported out in last week’s
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. There were a deal of numbers
to crunch.1,247,867 in all with 92,351 now dead.
Up
to 40 the mortality rate was unaffected by education, which is interesting as I
suppose they were all pretty healthy and were careful drivers. However, after
40 things appeared to change. Compulsory schooling seemed to be a good thing.
The hazard ratio as a percentage was down to about 94%, so it’s a small
advantage, but maybe worth having. Vocational training on top eased the hazard
ratio, again as a percentage, down to 92%.
With
any population there is a spread of responses and the variation was around ±4%
so the authors conclude that the length of your
education doesn’t really do anything for your life expectancy – relative to
your peer group of course. Perhaps they should start a new study in a less
developed part of the world than Sweden.
- A.C.J.Lager & J.Torssander,Proc. Nat. Academy Sci. (2012) DOI:10.1073/pnas.110589109
