Why Do College Graduates Behave More Healthfully Than Those Who Are Less Educated?

Abstract

College graduates live much healthier lives than those with less education, but research has yet to document with certainty the sources of this disparity. This study examines why U.S. young adults who earn college degrees exhibit healthier behavior than those with less education. I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), which offers information on education and health behaviors across adolescence and young adulthood (N=14,265). Accounting for selection into college degree attainment substantially reduces the associations between college degree attainment and health behavior, but college degree attainment demonstrates a strong causal effect on young adult health. Financial, occupational, social, cognitive, and psychological resources explain less than half of the association between college degree attainment and health behavior. The healthier behaviors of college graduates are the result of sorting into educational attainment, embedding of human capital, and mechanisms other than socioeconomic and psychosocial resources.

Against All Odds or by Dint of Privilege? Happiness and Life Satisfaction Returns to College in America

“…9 Net college returns for health or well-being, within or across age or cohort, reflect diverse countervailing social mechanisms or processes, making simple explanations of them likely incomplete (see Bauldry 2014Bauldry , 2015Conti and Heckman 2010;Schafer et al 2013). These social forces include, but are not limited to, shifts in the gendering of educational expectations and attainments; educational content, quality, or expansion across cohorts; economic conditions influencing labor market entry, placement, and persistence; rates of marriage and changing patterns in educational homogamy; domestic division of labor and separate spheres; and shifting social mobility and intergenerational correlations in educational attainment (Cutler and Lleras-Muney 2010;DiPrete and Buchmann 2006;Lawrence 2017;Mirowsky and Ross 2003;Ross and Mirowsky 2006). Once the demographic nuances of overall patterns in educational returns have been established, which is no small empirical task (see Montez and Friedman 2015), a necessary direction for causal research will be to disaggregate these patterns into their social determinants, or factors present and effective before, during, or after educational attainment, allowing these mechanisms to be specific to demographic groups when possible.…”

“…Following other research in this area (Bauldry 2014(Bauldry , 2015Conti and Heckman 2010;Lawrence 2017;Schafer et al 2013), I designated the upper two categories as having received a fouryear or bachelor's degree (1 = college or higher, 0 = less than four-year college). 2 …”

Targeting the spatial context of obesity determinants via multiscale geographically weighted regression

“…The percentage of households receiving SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps) was included because there is vigorous debate as to whether the program increases or decreases obesity rates in low-income communities [49,[68][69][70][71]. Lastly, the percentage of the tract population with at least a bachelor's degree was included, as there is evidence that individuals with at least some college education are less likely to be obese [65,72,73]. Average household income and median age were ultimately omitted from the final model due to collinearity, likely because low-income is a requirement for SNAP enrollment and middle-and older-aged populations are more likely to receive routine medical attention.…”

Targeting the spatial context of obesity determinants via multiscale geographically weighted regression

“…The percentage of households receiving SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps) was included because there is vigorous debate as to whether the program increases or decreases obesity rates in low-income communities (Meyerhoefer & Pylypchuk, 2008;DeBono, Ross, & Berrang-Ford, 2012;Gundersen, 2016;Segal et al, 2017;Burke et al, 2019). Lastly, the percentage of the tract population with at least a bachelor's degree was included, as there is evidence that individuals with at least some college education are less likely to be obese (Jackson et al, 2005;Ogden et al, 2010;Lawrence, 2017). Average household income and median age were ultimately omitted from the final model due to collinearity, likely because lowincome is a requirement for SNAP enrollment and middle-and older-aged populations are more likely to receive routine medical attention.…”