Wellthy & Wise

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.

“Education raises wages and lifetime wealth and therefore raises spending on investments in health,” Kaestner said. “Longer life associated with greater education provides an incentive to become more forward-looking because more of life’s benefits will occur in later years—more forward-looking people invest more in health.”

Policy makers often disregard the connection between education and health because there is a lack of evidence regarding the mechanism that proves education improves health. Even Kaestner concedes the evidence is scant, but he still argues that the “lack of evidence on mechanisms should not be used to discount [the] importance of education on health.”

One public policy implication is that non-medical interventions may improve overall population health, minimizing spending on health care by decreasing demand for health services, Kaestner argues. But further research needs to be conducted to research how education affects health. As another panelist sitting alongside Kaestner said that the “education nut” needs to be cracked, “that is if we know education helps, what is it about education that can help and is there a way that we can inform health care policy?”

Emily Miller is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.