Social and economic factors have a significant impact on longevity.

In Europe, life expectancy can vary by up to 8 years for men and 4 years for women, depending on social and economic criteria. The main risk factors are, in descending order: smoking, low income, overweight, followed to a lesser extent by the father's manual profession, few social contacts, alcohol consumption, lack of physical exercise and low consumption of fruit and vegetables (1).

What about the influence of education on longevity?

A higher level of education gives access to better income, health-related knowledge, social ties and access to healthy food, all of which improve health and therefore longevity. Logically, higher levels of education are associated with longer life expectancy. The difference in life expectancy based on education alone, with the threshold set at the start of upper secondary education, is around 2.5 years (2).

The educational level of the parents is also an important factor in the education of offspring. What remains to be determined is the impact of parental education on the longevity of new generations.

Researchers have compared the effects of intergenerational trajectories on longevity based solely on the criterion of level of education (2).

The results of this study of over 50,000 adults from 14 European countries are particularly interesting:

A social ascent - children with a higher level of education than their parents - leads to an improvement in life expectancy of around 2.1 years, without however reaching the life expectancy of the upper class.

A declining educational trajectory results in a loss of life expectancy of 2.2 years.

Maintaining a low educational trajectory results in a 2.9-year drop in life expectancy.

Thus, the longevity gap resulting from parents' low level of education can be practically corrected in a single generation by improving one's level of education.

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(1) MACKENBACH, Johan P., VALVERDE, José Rubio, BOPP, Matthias, et al. Determinants of inequalities in life expectancy: an international comparative study of eight risk factors. The Lancet Public Health, 2019, vol. 4, no 10, p. e529-e537.

https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(19)30147-1

(2) WAGNER, Cornelia, CULLATI, Stéphane, SIEBER, Stefan, et al. Intergenerational educational trajectories and inequalities in longevity: a population-based study of adults born before 1965 in 14 European countries. SSM-Population Health, 2023, vol. 22, p. 101367. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101367