Wellthy and Wise

Campus Report ^ | August 4, 2008 | Emily Miller

[bs9021]

Wellthy & Wise

by: Emily Miller, August 04, 2008

Education and health: two seemingly separate domains, but according Robert Kaestner, professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the two are closely intertwined. Education is a “powerful” determinant of health, the professor decrees, making good education policy good health policy.

According to Kaestner’s longitudinal study, education is a greater “predictor” of health and health behaviors than income level. He found that individuals who graduated high school raised their physical health by ¼th of the standard deviation and decreased the probability of poor health by thirty-five percent, while those who earned a Bachelors degree raised their health by ½th of the deviation and lowered the probability of poor health by fifty-five percent.

The findings of this study remain the same even when taking into account the individuals’ family history of health, biology, intelligence and non-cognitive abilities.

It is possible that other factors influence the relationship between education and health, like the intergenerational transmission of wealth, yet Kaestner maintains that while other alternative explanations are feasible, “none is likely to overturn the mountain of evidence that shows that education is a consistent and numerically important determinant of health.”

Education, he says, leads to better health by influencing factors that will cause greater investments in health, like access to employer-provided insurance, lower stress and a higher income. Individuals who are educated have easier and less expensive means to gather and comprehend information about the consequences of health, leading to better health behaviors such as not smoking nor binge drinking. As evidence, Kaestner notes that educated individuals with a Bachelors degree reduce their chances of smoking and binge drinking by nearly 100 percent.

Furthermore, education motivates people to invest in health and alters their incentives to do so...

[fightinJAG]

Um, read The Bell Curve.

It's not education per se that leads to people making better choices, including more healthy choices, but the cognifitive ability that led the person to become more educated in the first place.