Dropping out of high school can certainly restrict your options in life, but a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that the deaths of a quarter of a million Americans in 2000 were due to low education levels.
A New York Times article today about the study focused on the number of people who died because of poverty, but low education levels took more lives, according to the researchers. Here’s an excerpt from the study’s abstract:
“Approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States in 2000 were attributable to low education, 176,000 to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty.”
