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Education, cumulative advantage, and health

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Abstract

Education’s positive effect on health gets larger as people age. The large socioeconomic differences in health among older Americans mostly accrue earlier in adulthood on gradients set by educational attainment. Education develops abilities that help individuals gain control of their own lives, encouraging and enabling a healthy life. The health-related consequences of education cumulate on many levels, from the socioeconomic (including work and income) and behavioral (including health behaviors like exercising) to the physiological and intracellular. Some accumulations influence each other. In particular, a low sense of control over one’s own life accelerates physical impairment, which in turn decreases the sense of control. That feedback progressively concentrates good physical functioning and a firm sense of personal control together in the better educated while concentrating physical impairment and a sense of powerlessness together in the less well educated, creating large differences in health in old age.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 336 Burdine Hall, 1 University Station A1700, 78712-0118, Austin, TX

    John Mirowsky (professor in Sociology) & Catherine E. Ross (professor)

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  1. John Mirowsky
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  2. Catherine E. Ross
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Correspondence to John Mirowsky or Catherine E. Ross.

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He studies social aspects of health and well-being, particularly as they develop over the life course. His recent books includeEducation, Social Status, and Health, and the second edition ofSocial Causes of Psychological Distress, both co-authored with Catherine E. Ross and published by Aldine (2003). “Age at First Birth, Health, and Mortality” will be published in theJournal of Health and Social Behavior in 2005.

She studies the effects of socioeconomic status, work, family, and neighborhoods on men’s and women’s physical and mental health, and their sense of control versus powerlessness. Recent publications include “Does Medical Insurance Contribute to Socioeconomic Differentials in Health?”Milbank Quarterly 2000 (with John Mirowsky), “Neighborhood Disadvantage, Disorder, and Health.”Journal of Health and Social Behavior 2001 (with John Mirowsky), and “Powerlessness and The Amplification of Threat: Neighborhood Disadvantage, Disorder, and Mistrust”American Sociological Review 2001 (with John Mirowsky and Shana Pribesh). With John Mirowsky, she published two books in 2003:Social Causes of Psychological Distress (second edition), andEducation, Social Status and Health (Aldine).

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Mirowsky, J., Ross, C.E. Education, cumulative advantage, and health. Ageing International 30, 27–62 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02681006

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