EDUCATION VS. INSURANCE. I’m a little curious to hear to what resident health policy wonk Ezra makes of this provocative article on the impact of education on health. Thoughts?
The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income….
And, health economists say, those factors that are popularly believed to be crucial — money and health insurance, for example, pale in comparison.
Dr. Smith explains: �Giving people more Social Security income, or less for that matter, will not really affect people�s health. It is a good thing to do for other reasons but not for health.�
Health insurance, too, he says, �is vastly overrated in the policy debate.�
Instead, Dr. Smith and others say, what may make the biggest difference is keeping young people in school. A few extra years of school is associated with extra years of life and vastly improved health decades later, in old age.
It seems to me that our public policy debates over health are, like our healthcare system over all, far too focused on questions of coverage and disease treatment, rather than on actually improving the long-term health of the population through public health initiatives whose are results are not immediately apparent.
–Garance Franke-Ruta
