Talk about the ultimate ROI! A new study found that a college degree doesn’t just help boost career prospects, it can extend your life by over a decade.
A study from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, published in The Lancet Public Health journal, examined over 3,000 U.S. counties and uncovered a significant gap in lifespan between the most and least educated citizens.
What they found was college graduates in counties with high life expectancies live an average of 93.9 years, while their less-educated counterparts in counties with low life expectancies average just 57.9 years.
LIFE EXPECTANCY VARIES WITH EDUCATION AND REGION
When it comes to U.S. college graduates, if they were lumped into their own “country,” their life expectancy would rank fourth globally out of 199 countries. Those in the U.S. with less than a high school degree would have ranked 137th.
“In the US, more formal education often translates to better employment opportunities, including higher-paying jobs that have fewer health risks,” said the study’s senior author, Laura Dwyer-Lindgren. “This puts people in a better position to build a healthy life and, when needed, obtain high-quality health care.”
Other notable findings were that life expectancy varied by state and region within the U.S. The lower overall life expectancies were found in the Southeastern U.S. and within Appalachia and South Dakota, especially among those who didn’t finish high school.
Among those who had “some” college education, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, and northern Arizona had relatively large declines in life expectancy.
Interestingly enough, those who did not finish high school in California had large increases in life expectancy while many other counties had declines. This may be related to the state’s large immigrant population, as immigrants generally tend to live longer than their US-born counterparts.
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