Education and Mortality Risk

Introduction

Rippe & Irwin (2008) points out that education is generally concerned with impacting one’s general knowledge, developing people’s power of reasoning as well as that of making judgment. On the other hand, he defines mortality as the state of being subject to death. With the research showing a positive correlation between individual’s level of education and mortality risk, it will be interesting for this write up to define a hypothetical question, “Is mortality risk only affected by an individual’s level of education?”. This question can be best solved by defining education as the main attribute to mortality risk. The hypothetical question has both positive and negative approaches.

Gu (2007) highlights a number of reasons that justify the relationship between mortality risk and education level. According to him, the empirical analysis confirms that mortality risk is higher for less educated population. He further added that because of their low education attainment, the blacks generally face higher mortality than the whites. Additionally, Gu (2007) noted that behavioral risk associated with education level is influential on mortality risk. He argued that while a highly educated person has advanced the sense of reasoning and is cautious of his/her deeds, a less or not educated person is normally unaware of the precautions to take while resolving the conflict.

Richard (2011) agued that there is enough evidence from research to justify the fact that  mortality risk due to sickness is largely associated with ignorance of the available precautions that are necessary to prevent or cure the disease. According to him, this is the major reason why a larger percentage of U.S.A.’s population suffers from deaths resulting from cardiovascular diseases and cancer while the majority of Africans die because of different sexually transmitted diseases. Blane (2010) also added that one’s level of education may influence his/her receptivity to health education as it easily allows the educated to adapt their behavior. He noted that highly educated individuals normally have better access to medical care as opposed to those lower educated, putting the less educated at high mortality risk.

Gu (2007) also argues that higher educational degree is a typical prerequisite for higher compensated work. Additionally, people with higher educational achievements normally have the opportunity to extend their work. This points out to the fact that the level of education is correlated with the income earned. Highly educated people have better earning jobs with good assurance policy, making them access basic services like insurance policy, food, health, and shelter. This reduces their mortality risk as basic life requirement are catered for as opposed to the less or not educated people who live through riskier survival schemes.

However, not all mortality risks are caused by one’s educational level. According to Faeh and Minder (2009), despite similar causes of mortality, there may be essential dissimilarities in cause-specific mortality. The two provided an example of a research done in Swiss regions, which had pointed out that while deaths caused by circulatory diseases were more prevalent in German Switzerland, those related to drug and alcohol consumption were much more common in French Switzerland. This clearly indicates that apart from ones’ level of education, other factors like the individual perception on behavioral activities constituted by cultural practices also have a role to play in one’s level of mortality risk.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this write up has highlighted two distinct approaches in addressing the hypothetical question. It is clear from the write up that the level of education is the major regulator of mortality risk. This is because it incorporates both the level of ignorance and that of the income, which are the major factors in curbing mortality risk. However, the write up has also clearly demonstrated that apart from individuals’ level of education, other factors like one’s perception and cultural beliefs also contribute to mortality risk. This implies that education correlated with good individual perception reduces mortality risk.