A new study released by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found a “sizable gap” in mortality rates between college-educated individuals and their lesser-educated counterparts.
“Mortality differs substantially by educational attainment,” states the study, titled “Sources of Increasing Differential Mortality Among the Aged by Socioeconomic Status.”
More specifically, the study states that mortality rates of survey respondents with a college education are half those of respondents who did not complete high school.
The researchers also found “strong statistical evidence” of a “growing inequality of mortality risk” by socioeconomic status among individuals born after 1930 compared to those born before 1930.
Anthony Carnevale, a labor economist and director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, said the fact that college-educated individuals are living longer stems from a “complex network of mutually reinforcing economic, social and educational mechanisms that only can be dealt with through a multifaceted economic and educational policy response.”
“They are nested together in ways that make their combined negative effects mutually reinforcing, resilient, and superficially legitimate as class, racial and ethnic barriers to life, liberty and opportunity,” he said.
