Health and Education

MANIFESTO

This has been out for a while, but it's still interesting.

Going back to school may belong on your to-do list for good health, because better health tends to go along with more education, a new report says.

... The more education people had, the more likely they were to report better health, regardless of race or ethnicity.

That difference didn't just show up when the [Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Commission to Build a Healthier America] compared people with the fewest and most years of schooling. Even a few years of education made a difference.

For instance, high school graduates were nearly twice as likely as college graduates to report being in less than very good health.

It's an interesting correlation and not one I would have necessarily predicted.

David Williams, the commission's staff director, said in a news conference ... that a "poor education can lead to limited job options, lower incomes, and greater work-related stress. Down the road, that can limit a family's chances to live in a healthy home and neighborhood, increasing their exposure to harmful conditions and further emotional stresses that can lead to illness."

In contrast, "better educated people are more likely to have jobs that provide health insurance coverage, to be more knowledgeable about their health, and to have more time to attend to their health," Williams says. "We cannot separate education from health. A good education can lay the foundation for a healthy life."

There's an interesting kind of educational Darwinism at work here. It'll take quite a while to play out, and in the meantime, it looks like many of us will be supporting those poorly educated and unhealthy folk.