Why the uneducated are also less healthy

Education empowers you to know what
is required for healthy living In the advanced societies and to a certain level in the developed countries, life expectancy has been increasing. But the increase, according to research, is noticed more in the better-educated groups. Sade Oguntola, in this report, writes that with improvement on an individual’s level of education and access to quality health care, such an individual stands a better chance of living a longer life.

THE issue is why do the rich and educated live healthy lives while the poor and uneducated often do not? The answer may lie with education.

If you look in recent decades, you will find that life expectancy has been increasing, which is good, but much more in the better-educated groups. The fact that life expectancy may be tied to education was supported by a study by the Harvard School of Medicine, which showed that people with better education live longer.

The researchers used census population estimates and death certificate data covering 1990 to 2000, and information from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study (NLMS), which included statistics spanning 1981 to 1998. Only the non-Hispanic blacks and whites individuals were involved in the study to “limit the impact of immigration on estimates.”

Even though between the 1980s and 2000, life expectancy increases occurred nearly exclusively among high-education groups, but during that 10-year span, the longevity gap between the well educated and poorly educated widened, the study showed.

Though life expectancy for people with a high school degree or less did not change between 1990 and 2000, but those that were better educated gained more than 1.5 years over the same period, the study showed.

During that 10-year span, the longevity gap between the well educated and poorly educated widened. A well-educated white man lived, on average, 5.8 years longer than a white man did with less education in 1990. By 2000, that difference had grown to 7.9 years.

Data for black men and women of both races, showed similar tendencies, except in the case of poorly educated black and white women, whose life expectancy went down by 0.9 years and 0.2 years over 10 years, due, in large part, to lung diseases.

When the researchers looked at gender differences, they found that less-educated women actually had a decline in life expectancy. In 2000, those women with more than 12 years of education by age 25 could expect to live five years longer than less-educated women, the study found.

Though the study involved 1980s and 1990s, which were periods of rapidly rising life expectancy, the decline in mortality rate was not too high among the uneducated group, the study found. The diseases contributing most to the growing gap in cases of deaths amongst those educated and those that were not, essentially were diseases of the heart, lung and other cancers and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, all of which share tobacco use as a major risk factor.

The lead author, Dr. Ellen Meara, assistant professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School, in a comment said, “For the better educated, you have an expected life span of 80 years in 1990, but it is 81.6 by the year 2000. So it is quite a big gain”. He attributed the disparity to the fact that people that are more educated have had better access to both information about diseases and medical advances.

He suggested that quite literally the better educated would live longer and is less likely to die of many diseases. “As information about how to live longer, healthier lives becomes available and technologies become available to help people to take to such things like quit smoking or living a less sedentary lifestyle”the educated ones have being able to figure out successful ways to take appropriate healthy steps.

The researchers also wanted to “remind people: if you hear that life-expectancy is lengthening and it is getting better, it is important to remember that is not the case for everyone.” The challenge, Meara said, is to figure out ways to extend life expectancy of all groups in U.S society. “We need to get a better understanding of how we can extend these great things we are learning about on how to leave healthier lives,” she said.

He said said in a way older people who lack “health literacy” — that is, they cannot read and understand basic medical information — may be paying a high price, in terms of longevity or may tend to experience more health problems in most cases.

Writing in the 2007 issue of the journal, Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers said that one particular characteristic of a poor education and low reading skills, could alone account for much of the problem. Dr. David W. Baker of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University led the study of 3,260 Medicare patients that spanned over five years

Meanwhile, Dr. David L. Katz, Director of the Yale University School of Medicine’s Prevention Research Centre, thinks fighting poverty and improving education are key to increasing life expectancy among less-advantaged people.

He said that disparities in health are a major challenge. The less affluent and less educated are also, invariably, less healthy. “Initiatives that target health disparities are always welcome, but they may not go far enough if they do not relieve underlying discrepancies in educational or economic status,” Katz said.

However in the opinion of Professor Olajide Bademosi, a neurologist formerly with University College Hospital, (UCH), Ibadan, even though it is said that life expectancy increases with the level of education, but it is only applicable when the educated individual ensures that health information influences the lifestyle he/she lives.

“You may be educated but if you are not careful to apply all information that comes your way to live healthy and you now become say obese or develop a heart problem, of course that will definitely cut your life short.”

“Education on how to know things that can shorten your life is the most important thing. Of course, it is expected that if you have been to school, that will make it easier for you to know the things to embrace and avoid those that can shorten your lifestyle,” said Professor Julius Familusi, also a retired paediatrician from UCH too.