From the NEW YORK TIMES:
…The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance…
The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008, said S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the lead investigator on the study, published last month in Health Affairs. By 2008, life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found.
The decline among the least educated non-Hispanic whites, who make up a shrinking share of the population, widened an already troubling gap. The latest estimate shows life expectancy for white women without a high school diploma was 73.5 years, compared with 83.9 years for white women with a college degree or more. For white men, the gap was even bigger: 67.5 years for the least educated white men compared with 80.4 for those with a college degree or better…
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Considering what stress can do on a person, coupled with the other factors they indicated, it’s no wonder that the life expectancy has shrunk over the years.
Quality of life is not what it should be under many of the circumstances all people face. The sad fact of this is, even if a person is, in fact, educated- if they are in low-income jobs they still face issues that will impact their life expectancy.
Even if they are “smart” enough to steer away from drugs, smoking, and eat as healthy as possible, stress is still a huge factor and if they are in a job that doesn’t offer health insurance, or they can’t afford to take time off to take care of themselves, they can’t get proper medical care to keep them healthy.