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May 15th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, May 14 (HealthDay News) — It’s graduation season, and
new research offers yet another reason to congratulate someone who has
completed at least nine years of education: They’re likely to live
longer.
An unusual, comprehensive study involving 1.2 million Swedes shows that
students who were exposed to nine years of education rather than eight had
a lower mortality rate after age 40. While the finding suggests an
association between level of education and longevity, it does not
establish a cause-and-effect link.
Those exposed to the additional year of education also had lower
mortality from causes known to be related to education. The research, by
Anton Lager of the Centre of Health Equity Studies and Jenny Torssander of
the Swedish Institute for Social Research, both part of Stockholm
University, was published in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.
Many studies have shown a link between more years of education and
better health. But it has been difficult for researchers to show that the
cause wasn’t just personal characteristics, such as the ability to stick
with school or delay gratification. It has also been hard to determine
whether secondary benefits — getting a better job or earning a higher
income, for instance — might be the reason why people with more education
develop fewer health problems.
A policy change in Sweden provided a ready-made method to help solve
those mysteries and answer the question: Are the number of years in school
uniquely associated with better health?
From 1949 to 1962, Sweden added one year of compulsory schooling.
Children continued to start school at age 7; the new program increased the
number of years in school from eight to nine.
The change was implemented in a way that was designed to facilitate
long-term evaluation of the value and impact of the additional year in
school. All children born between 1943 and 1955 in 900 municipalities were
included in the study. Each year, as the program was phased in, children
in some municipalities were included in the new nine-year system and
others were not. Those not included were the control group. The
researchers gathered data on age of death and causes of mortality until
2007. During the 58-year follow-up period, about 92,000 of those in the
study died due to various causes.
The authors found that in what they call “later adulthood,” after age
40, the group with the ninth year of education had lower mortality from
all diseases than did those with eight years in school. Those people also
had a lower death rate from lung cancer, all cancers and accidents. Women
with the ninth year of school were less likely to die from ischemic heart
disease; men were less likely to die from external causes. All deaths of
those in the study, except for the 2 percent to 3 percent who emigrated,
were recorded.
Lager said the study shows the reason for lower mortality is not
knowledge in and of itself. He speculated that the ninth year helped
students develop a different attitude about themselves. “If your life is a
little better, you take a little better care of yourself. If you make a
little more income, have a job with a little more flexibility, more
control of time, then maybe you use less tobacco and alcohol,” he
said.
Dr. Mark Cullen, a professor of medicine at Stanford University with
research interests in social and environmental determinants of health,
said “the study adds strong evidence that including additional years in
school and higher education has a substantial impact on longevity.”
Cullen believes the additional year contributed to the students’
long-term ability to understand health messages, think effectively and
manage their lives. “We should never discount the direct value of
education in helping you interpret information and be involved in your own
health,” he said.
More information
For more on healthy aging, head to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
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