A survey by the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) has revealed that people with a higher level of education are generally healthier than those with lower levels.

This analysis is based on data from the SHARE Survey of Health, Age and Retirement in Europe, conducted by the LISER in Luxembourg and across sixteen other countries.

Many studies have shown that, on average, people with a higher education level are in better health and live longer than people with a lower level of education. According to a recent OECD report, at the age of 25, the life expectancy gap between the most educated and the least educated is 7.7 years for men and 4.6 years for women, with some variations depending on the country. In addition, depending on the countries considered, less educated people are 10 to 40% more likely to report poor health than more educated people.

Although the relationship between education level and health status is well established, LISER has emphasised that it is based on studies based on aggregate measures of inequality and ultimately ignore the differences in results that may exist throughout the distribution of health. The results of this study indeed found that education levels play a role in health. However, the difference in health level between the most educated and the least educated was not consistent throughout the health distribution. In other words, the difference in health status between more and less educated people was relatively small among the 10% of the population with better health.

On the other hand, this difference multiplies if the comparison is made between the more educated and less educated people who belong to the 10% of the population with the poorest state of health. In Luxembourg for example, the difference in health status between more and less educated people is 5.4 times higher for people who are part of the 10% of the population with the worst health than the 10% with the best health.

The analysis also showed that the main factors explaining this gap are not only the differences in educational attainment, but also the employment status of individuals, the level of household income and the frequency of sports activities practiced by the individual. These three factors explain about 61% of the differences in the health status of individuals.