Education Flashcards
Denney et al. (2010). Education inequality in mortality: The age and gender specific mediating effects of cigarette smoking.
Gist: Research debate over whether socioeconomic disparities in mortality can be explained by smoking. One one side, research reject the claims that the elevated mortality risks among disadvantaged groups is primarily due to their higher prevalence of risky behaviors. On the other side, researchers use different methods to find that smoking has a large impact on disparities. This study takes a different view by looking at how a diffusion model explains the association between smoking and mortality.
1) Diffusion model of disparities in smoking and mortality: (a) In early stages, smoking emerged first among high SES groups and was too expensive for low SES groups; (b) in middle stages, smoking diffused to rest of population and first begins to decline in high SES groups; (c) disparities widen as low SES pick up smoking and high SES give up smoking.
2) Gender also plays a role: Women adopted smoking later, so current education disparities are less strong among women than men and it’s why among older women, higher-SES smoke more.
3) Overall, smoking as a mediator between education and health depends on cohort and gender. For all adults, 20% of impact is explained (but larger difference for younger cohorts than older cohorts).
Brown et al., (2012). The significance of education for mortality compression in the United States.
Gist: Question remains as to whether longevity improvements are accompanied by increasing compression of old-age mortality or whether improvements in longevity led to a “shifting mortality scenario” where longevity improves but distribution of old-age deaths remains the same.
1) Education shapes person’s exposures to multiple health risks & linked to a set of material & nonmaterial resources.
2) Most research on mortality compression looks at variability within or between nations over time. The current article looks at this with modal age at death rather than life expectancy. The latter is sensitive to mortality reductions at younger ages & is a poor index of variability in the average age of death.
3) Results show that modal age of death is higher & mortality above the mode is more compressed with increased education. This means that highly educated people are able to use their resources to maximize their life chances under current conditions & delay the biological aging process.
Masters, et al. (2012). Educational differences in U.S. adult mortality: A cohort perspective.
Gist: Hierarchical cross-classified random-effects models were used to simultaneously measure age, period, and cohort effects of mortality risk between 1986-2006 for black and white men and women for all-cause and cause-specific mortality by education level. Temporal reductions in black and white men’s and women’s mortality rates were driven completely by cohort changes in mortality. Disparate cohort effects between education groups widened the education gap in all-cause mortality risk and mortality risk from heart disease and lung cancer across time. Educational disparities in unpreventable cancers did not change over time.
Hummer & Lariscy. (2011). Educational attainment and adult mortality.
Gist: There are educational attainment disparities in mortality risk.
1) Measure of educational attainment: (a) most often completed relatively early in adult life & usually remains constant throughout adulthood; (b) may be more relevant than other measures of SES for people out of the labor force; (c) respondents more likely to report education than wealth or income; (d) typically precedes income, occupation, & accumulation of wealth (both life course & causal sense).
2) More research on functional form of education-mortality relationship. Some researchers use as continuous predictor while others find evidence for cut-points that coincide with achieving particular degree levels.
3) Education-mortality relationship: (a) education provides resources beyond increased income; (b) strength & consistency of relationship over time, across different places, & among different demographic groups suggests it is a “fundamental cause” of health and mortality.
4) Mechanisms for relationship: (a) Socioeconomic attainment - via income, an immediately available economic resource to purchase health-related goods & services; also works partly through employment & occupational status; (b) Health behavior - more-educated are more likely to exercise, refrain from heavy alcohol & smoking, maintain health weight, etc.; (c) Social psychological resources - few studies have been able to tap into this mechanism; (d) Access to & utilization of health care - plays minor mediating role.
5) Different patterns of risk by cause of death, age, gender, & race/ethnicity: (a) Cause of death - plays larger role in circulatory death; (b) Age - age-as-leveler hypothesis vs. cumulative advantage hypothesis; (c) Sex - only small differences; (d) Race/ethnicity - Education differences in mortality pronounced for groups among younger adults but only wide differences for whites among older adults.
6) Social policy as health policy: (a) Shift more people out of lower portions of educational distribution; (b) Reduce educational disparities by influencing “downstream” mechanisms associated with low levels of educational attainment.
Miech et al., (2011). The enduring association between education and mortality: The role of widening and narrowing disparities.
Gist: This article examines educational disparities in mortality over time & how they emerge, grown, decline, & disappear. The fundamental cause prediction is tested by investigating shifting health outcomes over time. Their results find that there is substantial widening & narrowing of educational disparities across causes of death, almost all causes of death with increasing mortality rates also have widening educational disparities, and the total educational disparity in mortality would be 25% smaller if not for newly emergent & growing educational disparities since 1999.
Rogers et al. (2011). Educational degrees and adult mortality risk in the United States.
Gist: Presenting the first published estimates of U.S. adult mortality risk by detailed educational degree (including advanced post-secondary degrees). They find that there is an educational gradient in mortality risk for each degree achieved. Compared to adults with a professional degree, MAs are 5 percent, BAs are 26 percent, AAs are 44 percent, some college are 65 percent, HS grads are 80 percent, and GED or less than 12 years of school are 95 percent more likely to die during follow-up period (controlling for sociodemographic controls). There are also variations in the relationship by gender and cohort. The mortality gap between those with HS degree and those with at least a master’s is widening for each successive cohort among females (less distinct among males). Educational policy is a health policy; focus on keeping everyone on track toward a degree (especially women historically and men more recently).
Montez, Hummer, & Hayward. (2012). Educational attainment and adult mortality in the Untied States: A systematic analysis of functional form.
Gist: They evaluated 13 functional forms of the education-mortality relationship across race-gender-age subgroups. Overall, results showed that the preferred functional form was a linear decline in mortality risk from 0 to 11 years of education followed by a step-change reduction in mortality risk after attainment of a HS diploma. Then mortality risk resumed a linear decline with a stepper slop than what was found prior to HS diploma attainment. This form emphasizes the need to integrate the credentialist perspective to explain the step-change reduction in mortality after attaining a HS diploma with a human capital perspective to explain linear declines before & after a HS diploma.
Everett, Rehkopf, & Rogers. (2013). The nonlinear relationship between education and mortality: An examination of cohort, race/ethnic, and gender differences.
Gist: Research in the education-mortality relationship have not explored the shape of the relationship and how it varies by demographic group. Overall, there were changes over time in the shape and magnitude of the gradient for cohorts of women and white men but little change for younger cohorts of black men.
1) Different than Montez et al. (2012), they find a slope change at 9 years of education (transition from middle to high school).
2) There is an increasing educational disparity in mortality for younger cohorts. This is driven more by increases in mortality risk for lower-educated groups than any decreases in mortality risk for higher-educated groups.
3) For white males, this pattern may be related to changes over time in the returns to education. For black men, the delayed emergence of the gradient and lack of significance in its slope for men of different cohorts displays a continued SES disadvantage.
4) Extensive & continued history of racism in US may be undermining black men’s health returns to education: (a) structural & interpersonal discrimination as barriers to improving SES; (b) social psychological factors affected by education (e.g., self-efficacy, problem solving, feelings of mastery) may be undermined by exposure to discrimination & stigma.
5) For women, there is an emerging gradient in oldest cohort that is steeper in each subsequent cohort. The oldest cohort faced barriers to acquiring higher education & translating education into high-quality employment or high wages.
6) Compared to black men, black women are better able to translate their educational achievement into health benefits. For whites, there are no gender differences in relationship for younger cohorts.
