An Education Gradient in Health or a Health Gradient in Education?

• In Event: 343 - Section on Medical Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 18. Education and Health

Abstract

There is a positive gradient relating educational attainment and health, yet the causal direction of the gradient is not clear. Does higher education improve health—an education gradient in health? Or do the healthy become highly educated—a health gradient in education? This study evaluates the direction of the gradient by tracking changes in educational attainment and self-rated health (SRH) from age 15 to age 31 in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, 1997 cohort (NLSY97). Ordinal logistic regression confirms that there is a health gradient in education: that is, high-SRH adolescents are more likely to become highly educated, partly but not entirely because adolescent SRH is associated with adolescents’ academic performance, college plans, and family background. Fixed-effects longitudinal regression shows that, once initial advantages in SRH are controlled, individuals who complete higher levels of education experience little improvement in their SRH. Completion of a high school diploma or associate’s degree has no effect on SRH at age 31, while completion of a bachelors or graduate degree have effects that, though significant, are quite small (less than 0.1 points on a 5-point scale). While it is possible that educational attainment would have greater effect on health at older ages, at age 31 what we see is primarily a health gradient in education, not an education gradient in health.

Authors

• Jamie L. Lynch, St. Norbert College

• Paul von Hippel, University of Texas