Ljungdahl Sofia, Bremberg Sven G
1 The Public Health Agency of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden.
1 The Public Health Agency of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden 2 Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
Eur J Public Health. 2015 Aug;25(4):587-92. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/cku243. Epub 2015 Jan 23.
Health is substantially worse in less educated people, and extended education might potentially improve their health. A prerequisite for a beneficial health effect of education is that the effect is absolute. An absolute effect of education means that the health effect comes about independently of any effect on other persons. A relative effect, on the other hand, only contributes to individual competitiveness in relation to others. Studies of natural experiments of extended compulsory education, and other educational-policy changes, provide an option for the analysis of absolute effects of education. Published studies, however, present conflicting results.
A meta-analysis was performed of European studies where the health effects of extended compulsory or secondary level education on low-educated individuals were investigated.
Twenty-two relevant publications were identified. The meta-analysis indicated statistically significant favourable effects of educational reforms on rates of mortality, self-reported poor health and obesity. The effects were, however, small, 1-4%.
An educational reform that typically added one educational year in the least educated group was associated with a mean 2.1% reduction in mortality in men before age 40. This effect might be compared with the total educational gradients of mortality rates in Swedish men at ages 30-64. One extra year of education after compulsory education corresponds to a 41% reduction in mortality, which is 20 times more than the absolute effect of education found in this meta-analysis. Thus, it unlikely that extended compulsory education will substantially improve the health of the least educated individuals.
受教育程度较低人群的健康状况明显较差，延长教育时间可能会改善他们的健康。教育对健康产生有益影响的一个前提是这种影响是绝对的。教育的绝对影响意味着健康影响的产生独立于对其他人的任何影响。另一方面，相对影响仅有助于个人相对于他人的竞争力。对延长义务教育及其他教育政策变化的自然实验研究为分析教育的绝对影响提供了一种选择。然而，已发表的研究结果相互矛盾。
对欧洲的研究进行荟萃分析，这些研究调查了延长义务教育或中等教育对低学历个体的健康影响。
确定了22篇相关出版物。荟萃分析表明，教育改革对死亡率、自我报告的健康状况不佳和肥胖率有统计学上显著的有利影响。然而，这些影响很小，为1%-4%。
在受教育程度最低的群体中通常增加一年教育的教育改革与40岁之前男性死亡率平均降低2.1%相关。这种影响可与瑞典30-64岁男性死亡率的总体教育梯度相比较。义务教育后多接受一年教育相当于死亡率降低41%，这是本荟萃分析中发现的教育绝对影响的20倍。因此，延长义务教育不太可能显著改善受教育程度最低人群的健康状况。
