March 8, 2021
American adults without a college degree have experienced greater reductions in life expectancy. (Illustration/Egan Jimenez, Princeton University)
Before COVID-19 took a toll on overall life expectancy, adult life expectancy had already declined among the two-thirds of Americans who lack a bachelor’s degree. Researchers say those with a college degree increasingly live longer and more prosperous lives while those without face rising mortality and declining prospects.
American adults without a college degree have experienced greater reductions in life expectancy when compared to their counterparts with more education, USC and Princeton University researchers have found.
The study reveals that after nearly a century of declining mortality up to the late 1990s, the progress continued into the 21st century for more-educated Americans but stalled for the population as a whole and reversed for the two-thirds of Americans who do not have a college degree.
Life expectancy falling for adults without a bachelor’s degree
B. Rose Huber, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
March 8, 2021 3 p.m.
Life expectancy in the United States dropped in 2020 due to COVID-19, but for American adults without a college degree, an increase in mortality occurred years earlier, according to a new study authored by Anne Case and Sir Angus Deaton of Princeton University.
Illustration by
Egan Jimenez, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Since 2010, people without a college degree have experienced an absolute rise in mortality, the researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Meanwhile, people with a college degree have experienced a decrease.
(Thomas Wells/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP)
(CN) What was praised as a success story just a decade ago, declining mortality rates across the board, has seen a steady reversal in one group largely due to an increase in cardiovascular disease and untreated hypertension.
Researchers from Princeton studied adult mortality data from 1990 to 2018 and calculated how long the average 25-year-old could expect to live before turning 75. They published their findings Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team looked at mortality data across cohorts using death certificates from the National Vital Statistical System, which includes 48.9 million deaths between 1990 and 2018, and drew on population data from the American Survey and the Current Population Surveys.