The warnings started when I was in junior high (now called middle school). My parents, both of whom were in the first generation of our family to go to college, started warning me that if I didn’t quit fooling around at school and do my homework I might not get a degree. And without a degree, I might not get a job.
Warnings like those wash right off the back of most 11- or 12-year-olds, so I didn’t feel the need to change my behavior. Looking back, I think there was one thing they could have said that would have made me sit up and pay attention: Not getting an education could kill me. That actually happens to be true. Of course, my parents didn’t know that then, and neither did anyone else. But a lot of recent research is finding exactly that.
Causation vs. Correlation
When I first started looking at the studies showing the connection between education, health, and premature death, I thought the whole idea was absurd. I’ve been writing about men’s health for more than a decade, and it’s well known that women outlive men.
But could the simple fact of having a college degree make you healthier or live longer? The answer is yes–and the problem is getting worse.
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