Mental Health

Educated People Live Longer

By Staff Reporter | Update Date: May 17, 2012 11:53 PM EDT

The importance of education is known to all. This significance of education is further solidified by a report released by CDC which states that education not only improves a person's financial status but is also the key for a longer life.

According to the report, higher education inculcates a person with a better sense of health habits and hygiene, which leads to him or her to live a longer life. It was found that a person who graduate from high school lives approximately nine years more than a person who don't graduate.

"Highly educated people tend to have healthier behaviors, avoid unhealthy ones and have more access to medical care when they need it," explained Amy Bernstein, a health services researcher for the National Center for Health Statistics and lead author of the study, to USA Today. "All of these factors are associated with better health."

According to researchers, shorter life spans have been reported consistently for over a decade now. In 2010, it was reported that 31 percent people aged between 25 and 64 having a high school diploma or less were smokers while only 24 percent of the people who had a college degree smoked and a mere 9 percent of people with a graduate diploma were smokers.

According to HealthDay, the benefits of a higher education differed between the two sexes. More than 25 percent of the women without a degree were obese. However, education didn't affect obesity when it came to men. Also, it was observed that higher education had a better effect on the life span of men than women. According to the reports highly educated men live nine years longer than other men, where as highly educated women live eight years longer than other women.

Lesser educated people are also in a poorer financial situation. Hence, more often than not, their living conditions are not very healthy. This is another reason why better educated people live longer. Bernstein says. "It's all interconnected."

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