Study: High education reduces the risk of heart attack

Extending the years of childhood education may reduce adult heart disease risk, a recent study suggests. According to the team of researchers, people with more education may have reduced heart disease because they have higher incomes, allowing them to afford better food and health care
The findings suggest that state policies requiring children to attend additional years of school may result in a reduced risk for heart disease and improvements in several cardiovascular risk factors in adulthood.

As part of the study, the researchers conducted a natural experiment by evaluating state compulsory schooling laws, which legislate the number of years children must attend school. From two large, national surveys conducted from 1971 to 2012, they identified more than 75,000 people born from 1900 to 1950, when states required children to attend school between 0 and 12 years. They then used U.S. Census data on a group of similar individuals to predict the number of years of required schooling for each individual, based on their year and state of birth.

Overall, about a third of the study participants did not graduate from high school. While 34.5 per cent reported heart disease, the researchers found that each year of additional compulsory schooling through high school was associated with a 2.5 per cent reduction in occurrence. They also noted improvements in several cardiovascular risk factors with each additional year, including reductions of more than 3 per cent in smoking and nearly 5 per cent in depression.

"For clinicians and health systems struggling to address disparities in heart disease between the rich and the poor, our findings suggest that cross-sectoral interventions to address social factors like education are important," said lead author Rita Hamad. The team of researchers suggests that as a society, we should be thinking about investing in social policies to improve overall health and reduce health care costs. Findings were published in the Journal of PLOS Medicine.

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