America’s university graduates live much longer than non-graduates

AMERICA’S ECONOMIC record over the past 20 years has been impressive, outperforming other rich countries. Less impressive is its measure of wellness, or how long people live. A study by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, two economists at Princeton University, is a case in point. Their latest research shows that in America there is a huge and growing gap between the life expectancy of people with degrees and those without. In 2021, at age 25, Americans who do not have a four-year college degree (about two-thirds of the adult population) were expected to live on average about ten years less than those who do. In 1992 the gap was a third of that (see chart 1).