{"id":21439,"date":"2010-03-09T10:21:27","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T15:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=21439"},"modified":"2013-12-15T03:54:17","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T08:54:17","slug":"age-education-and-functional-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/03\/09\/age-education-and-functional-decline\/","title":{"rendered":"Age, Education, and Functional Decline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is the second post using material borrowed from the essay, &#8220;<a href=\"..\/..\/articles\/fall-2009\/facts-and-fictions-about-an-aging-america\/\" target=\"_blank\">Facts and Fictions About an Aging America<\/a>.&#8221;\u00a0 Our online host, <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Contexts magazine<\/a>, is offering <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/aging\" target=\"_blank\">some free content<\/a>, including this essay, now through March 15th.\u00a0 See yesterday&#8217;s post <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/03\/08\/the-graying-of-america\/\" target=\"_self\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>While people in industrialized countries live longer and healthier lives than ever, more educated people enjoy even less morbidity than less educated people.\u00a0 The figure below illustrates the decline in mental and physical function over time for people with a college degree, a high school degree, and no degree at all:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/03\/09\/age-education-and-functional-decline\/featureagingfigure2\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-21441\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-21441\" title=\"FeatureAgingFigure2\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/03\/FeatureAgingFigure2.png\" width=\"425\" height=\"315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/03\/FeatureAgingFigure2.png 509w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/03\/FeatureAgingFigure2-500x371.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 425px) 100vw, 425px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The figure shows that more educated people experience &#8220;excellent health&#8221; than less educated at every age, except perhaps 85 and above.\u00a0 Why might this be?<\/p>\n<p>Well, higher educated people may come from wealthier families who were able to provide their children with health care, good nutrition, and exercise.\u00a0 Having degrees may also correlate with jobs that are less harmful to the body and offer both health insurance and more free time to exercise.\u00a0 Lower educational attainment is likely correlated with economic insecurity; a lifetime of struggling to make ends meet could create the kind of bad stress that interferes with both mental and physical health.<\/p>\n<p>Other theories?\u00a0 Thoughts on these?<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the second post using material borrowed from the essay, &#8220;Facts and Fictions About an Aging America.&#8221;\u00a0 Our online host, Contexts magazine, is offering some free content, including this essay, now through March 15th.\u00a0 See yesterday&#8217;s post here. While people in industrialized countries live longer and healthier lives than ever, more educated people enjoy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[349,345,34],"class_list":["post-21439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ageaging","tag-disability","tag-education"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21439"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60408,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21439\/revisions\/60408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}