The relationship between education and health has not been investigated to any great extent in this State, but studies carried out in other countries show a clear correlation between average education and health/life expectancy, writes DON RYAN
COUNTER ARGUMENTS against cutbacks in education provision have focused almost exclusively on the benefits of the retention and development of a high quality and inclusive education system in stimulating a revival of the economy and contributing to the social cohesion of the country.
However, an equally, if not more, important argument is the detrimental effects these measures will have on the health and life expectancy of individuals and the population.
The relationship between education and health has not been investigated to any great extent in Ireland, but studies carried out in other countries show a clear correlation between average education and health/life expectancy. As average education increases, life expectancy improves.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that a large and persistent association between education and health has been well documented and has found that:
Better educated people have lower morbidity rates from the most common acute and chronic diseases, independent of basic demographic and labour market factors.
Life expectancy is increasing for everyone, yet differences in life expectancy have grown over time between those with and without a college education.
Health behaviours alone cannot account for health status differences between those who are less educated and those who have more years of education.
The mechanisms by which education influences health are complex and are likely to include (but are not limited to) interrelationships between demographic and family background indicators, effects of poor health in childhood, greater resources associated with higher levels of education, a learned appreciation for the importance of good health behaviours, and one’s social network.
Worryingly, given the level and extent of education cuts in Ireland, a group of researchers noted in a 2008 Health Affairs article that the education- related gap in life expectancy has grown considerably in recent years.
Between 1981 and 2000, the difference in health outcomes between individuals with a second-level education or less and individuals with any college education increased by about 30 per cent.
People with more than a second-level diploma can expect to live up to seven years longer than their less-educated counterparts, according to a study from Harvard Medical School.
There are multiple reasons for this association, although it is likely that the health differences are in part the result of differences in behaviour across education groups.
Studies in Ireland and other countries have investigated the relationship between education and various health risk factors – smoking, drinking, diet and exercise, use of illegal drugs, household safety, use of preventive medical care, and care for hypertension and diabetes – and results suggest very strong gradients where the better educated have healthier behaviours.
Those with more years of schooling are less likely to smoke, to drink heavily, to be overweight or obese, or to use illegal drugs.
The better educated report having tried illegal drugs more frequently, but they gave them up more readily.
Health behaviours explain some but not all of this association. Education may improve health simply because the better educated have more resources and greater access to healthcare.
There is also an important psychological dimension contributing to the association between education and health. School and teachers, along with parents, play an important role in developing an individual’s perceptions of their own ability and worth, such as self-esteem and self-efficacy.
Negative manifestations of these concepts impact greatly on individual’s mental and physical health and on health behaviours.
Inequalities in mortality mirror socioeconomic inequalities, with research showing that by improving educational outcomes, the most disadvantaged groups have the potential to address health and life expectancy inequalities.
Our Government, in attempting to rectify the country’s economic mess, punished the most vulnerable, the most educationally marginalised and the most disadvantaged in our society, and in doing so condemned a large cohort of marginalised young people to both educational and health disadvantage.
Expenditure on education and health are the two most fundamental and important investments that this or any country can make on behalf of its citizens. There is clear evidence that increasing educational attainment leads to decreased healthcare costs, and that increasing expenditure in education can be hugely effective in improving both the level of education and the health status/life expectancy of the population.
Our policymakers appear unimpressed by the educational and social arguments being made against cutbacks to education; they cannot, however, ignore the compelling correlation between education and living longer.
Don Ryan is president of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland and holds an MA in Health Promotion from NUIG