Who Dies Young?

Americans with different levels of education die at different rates, and the least-educated Americans have seen their death rates surge in a way that more-educated Americans have not.

But the relevant divide does not seem to be between people who earned a bachelor’s degree — who remain a minority among American adults — and people who didn’t. Other research suggests that the problem is concentrated in specific areas of the US, and between the very least-educated Americans (particularly high school dropouts) and the rest of the country, rather than between college grads and non-grads.

Moreover, the cause of the divergence between high school dropouts and the rest of the country does not seem to be caused by “deaths of despair.” There is no doubt that the opioid epidemic in particular has wrought spectacular damage in the US. But some researchers are finding that stagnating progress against cardiovascular disease is an even bigger contributor to US life expectancy stalling out, and to mortality divides between the most- and least-educated Americans.

From Dylan Matthews.

Cardiovascular disease differences in this case would be mostly due to smoking, alcohol use, stress, and a low quality diet. 

Exercise could also contribute to the difference, but I am skeptical that it actually does. The jobs of less educated people are, on average, less sedentary and provide at least as much exercise as more educated people secure.  There is also no good reason to think that the non-work time of less educated people is more sedentary than the non-work time of more educated people.