Ability to delay gratification and health

An interesting article from NYT- A Surprising Secret to a Long Life: Stay in School;

"Victor Fuchs, a health economist at Stanford, points out that it is not clear how or why education would lead to a longer life.

And, he said, there are other mysteries. For example, women increased their years of schooling more than men have in recent decades. But men are catching up with women in their life spans.

And it might be expected that after a certain point, more years of school would not add to a person’s life span. That, however, is not what the data shows. The education effect never wanes. But most researchers say they are swayed by Dr. Lleras-Muney’s work and the studies in other countries. That, though, leaves the question of why the education effect occurs.

Dr. Lleras-Muney and others point to one plausible explanation — as a group, less educated people are less able to plan for the future and to delay gratification. If true, that may, for example, explain the differences in smoking rates between more educated people and less educated ones.

Smokers are at least twice as likely to die at any age as people who never smoked, says Samuel Preston, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania. And not only are poorly educated people more likely to smoke but, he says, “everybody knows that smoking can be deadly,” and that includes the poorly educated.

But education, Dr. Smith at RAND finds, may somehow teach people to delay gratification. For example, he reported that in one large federal study of middle-aged people, those with less education were less able to think ahead.
“Most of adherence is unpleasant,” Dr. Smith says. “You have to be willing to do something that is not pleasant now and you have to stay with it and think about the future.”

He deplores the dictums to live in the moment or to live for today. That advice, Dr. Smith says, is “the worst thing for your health.”

Researchers cited in the article; James Smith / Richard Hodes / Michael Grossman /Adriana Lleras-Muney /Victor Fuchs / Samuel Preston / Lisa Berkman / Stephanie Raymond / Kristen Bronner / Jonathan Skinner / Richard Suzman

Related
The Dartmouth Atlas Project

"The Relationship Between Education and Adult Mortality in the U.S.," Review of Economic Studies, Vol.72(1), January 2005

'Education and Health: Evaluating theories and evidence, joint with David Cutler, February 2006, NBER WP 12352, July 2006

The New England Centenarian Study

The Okinawa Centenarian Study

Study Links Medical Spending to Life Expectancy Gains

From the Blogs; Arnold Kling, Mankiw, Tyler Cowen, econometrics posts from Healthcare Economist

Causal inference, moral hazard, and the challenges of social science

End of year effect?