Has science found a way to live longer? (Picture: Getty)
Staying at school beyond the age of 16 has been linked to living longer.
New research shows that people who achieve higher levels of education than their parents age at a slower rate and have a lower risk of death.
The study is the first to connect educational mobility with pace of biological aging and mortality.
Researchers from Columbia University, New York, gathered their data by studying three different generations stretching back to 1948, using an algorithm known as the DunedinPACE epigenetic clock.
The study covered almost 15,000 people and three generations (Picture: Getty)
Named after the Dunedin Study birth cohort used to develop it, DunedinPACE functions like a speedometer for the aging process and uses blood tests to measure how fast or slow a person’s body changes as they grow older.
The latest findings showed that two years of additional schooling translated to a 2-3% slower pace of ageing, which corresponds to a roughly 10% reduction in risk of mortality.
Daniel Belsky, associate professor at Columbia Mailman School, said: ‘We’ve known for a long time that people who have higher levels of education tend to live longer lives.
‘But there are a bunch of challenges in figuring out how that happens and, critically, whether interventions to promote educational attainment will contribute to healthy longevity’.
He added: ‘Ultimately, experimental evidence is needed to confirm our findings. Epigenetic clocks like DunedinPace have potential to enhance such experimental studies by providing an outcome that can reflect impacts of education on healthy ageing well before the onset of disease and disability in later life.’
Biological aging is the accumulation of molecular changes, which slowly undermines the strength of our cells, tissues and organs as we grow older.
The study looked at 14,106 participants spanning three generations to link children’s educational attainment data with that of their parents.
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For 2,437 participants with a sibling, the researchers also tested whether differences in educational attainment between siblings was associated with a difference in the pace of ageing.
They found that siblings with higher educational mobility tended to age slower compared with their less educated siblings.
‘A key confound in studies like these is that people with different levels of education tend to come from families with different educational backgrounds and different levels of other resources,’ said first author and PhD candidate Gloria Graf.
‘To address these confounds, we focused on educational mobility, how much more (or less) education a person completed relative to their parents, and sibling differences in educational attainment – how much more (or less) education a person completed relative to their siblings.
‘These study designs control for differences between families and allow us to isolate the effects of education.’
She added: ‘We found that upward educational mobility was associated both with a slower pace of ageing and decreased risk of death. In fact, up to half of the educational gradient in mortality we observed was explained by healthier ageing trajectories among better-educated participants.’
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