Educational differences in survival following heart attacks and strokes: The intersectionality of gender and cohort

• In Event: 4403 - Inequalities in the Health Returns to Education

Abstract

A considerable number of Americans have heart attacks or strokes every year, health events that usually have a sudden onset and can cause health problems that lead to death. In this study we examine educational differences in survival following these acute health events, as well as investigating whether educational differences may vary between men and women, or across three historical cohorts (GI, Silent, and Boomer). We also investigate mediators between educational attainment and survival, considering a number of individual factors. Drawing on data from the 1992-2014 Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we use discrete-time event history analysis to study survival for a sample of respondents who experienced either a heart attack or a stroke. We find an educational gradient in survival following a heart attack or a stroke with the better educated surviving longer, but the gradient is weaker for stroke than for heart attack. Cohort variations exist with the educational gradients stronger for more recent cohorts (Silent and Boomer) as compared with the GI cohort. No gender difference is found but gender intersects with cohort membership to shape survival such that women from the most recent Boomer cohort benefit more from a college education compared with either women from earlier cohorts or men from the Boomer cohort. The educational differences in survival are largely accounted for by marital status and changes in health behaviors following heart attacks or strokes.

Authors

• Wen Fan, Boston College

• Jack Lam, University of Queensland