Not having a college degree can take years off your life.
Almost two-thirds of American adults do not have college degrees, and they have become increasingly excluded from good jobs, political power and social esteem. As their lives and livelihoods are threatened, their longevity declines. |
 | | Nadia Hafid |
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By Anne Case and Angus Deaton |
Our startling findings on life expectancy and education come from research that we began 10 years ago. We were working on different issues: Anne on rising pain — she is a long-term sufferer from lower-back pain — and Angus on suicide, which was not otherwise on his mind. |
We found marked increases among a wide range of Americans in pain and in suicide rates, which we wanted to look at relative to overall mortality. That led to the discovery that overall mortality was rising among white, middle-aged men and women, something that was not previously identified and was a reversal of demographic progress that was not supposed to happen. Suicides, opioid overdoses and deaths from alcoholic liver disease were rising rapidly not just among those in midlife but also among young adults, and Anne christened them "deaths of despair," a term that has entered the lexicon. |
In our first report in 2015, we found that the rise in mortality largely affected the two-thirds of Americans who did not have four-year college degrees. People with some college but without bachelor's degrees did better than those with only high school diplomas, but the real gap was between those with at least four-year degrees and those without. This was true even for suicides, for which rates were lower among the more educated, contradicting more than a century of conventional wisdom. |
In our recent guest essay, we highlight that the all-cause mortality gap by education — which has been known since the 1970s — has widened alarmingly, especially since the Covid pandemic. People with four-year college degrees do about as well as the populations of the most long-lived countries in the world do, on average. America's inability to keep pace with other rich countries is largely driven by the misfortunes of the less educated. Although rising suicide rates are not the largest contributor, they and the other self-inflicted deaths tell us that something very wrong is happening in working-class America. A similar mortality crisis in Russia and Eastern Europe was a symptom of political collapse and dysfunction; we can only hope that the same is not true of America today. |
 | | Source: Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Princeton University |
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What Our Readers Are Saying |
Want to improve people's educability and access to higher education? Guarantee excellent universal child care and preschool and universal health care along a single-payer or European model. When the basics of life are unaffordable for everyone but the 9 percent, capitalism has failed. When are we going to realize that? — DrR, Los Angeles I worked as a waitress in Las Vegas for 42 years. A single mother, raised my daughter alone, no child support. My daughter is college educated with a master's degree. I am now retired and have a good life. The difference between me and a person with a college education? I've been a member of the Culinary Union, Local 226, for 42 years. One of the benefits of being a union member is health care. When I retired, my dues were $49 a month. Health care includes vision and dental; this was for family members too. I also receive a pension from the union — $50,000 lump sum and a monthly check. It's hard to believe that any working American would turn down a union; it's our way out of poverty. Being a union member also gives us a collective dignity in being the work force that keeps this country going. — Maggie, Las Vegas Not everyone is capable of or well suited for the attainment of a four-year degree. We need to recognize that fact without diminishing the status of those who are not "college material." There are different types of intelligence, differing kinds of skills. — Jeff Clapp, Maine |
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