Story at a glance
- A new paper found that life expectancy is falling more drastically for people without college degrees than for people with degrees.
- Between 1992 and 2010, life expectancy for both educational groups grew.
- But it began to drop for both groups by 2019, and continued to do so throughout the pandemic.
Americans without a college degree don’t live as long as those with a degree, according to a new study.
And the gap between how long those with and without an undergraduate degree are living is widening.
The study, featured the fall 2023 edition of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, found that life expectancy increased for both educational groups between 1992 and 2010.
In 2010, a 25-year-old without a four-year college degree could expect to live about another 54 years, compared to 58 extra years for a person of the same age with a bachelor’s degree, according to the study.
But in the lead-up to the COVID-19 pandemic, life expectancy largely stagnated for those without a degree even as it continued to go up for those with a degree.
By 2019, life expectancy for the latter group had slightly increased to about 59 years past the age of 25, or about 84 years in total, while it dropped slightly for the former, moving closer to 53 additional years.
Then, during the pandemic, life expectancy shortened for both groups — but more for those without a degree, further expanding the gap. By 2021, a person without a four-year degree was only expected to live another 50, while a person with a degree could still expect to live about another 58.
“GDP may be doing great, but people are dying in increasing numbers, especially less-educated people,” Anne Case, one of the report authors, said in an interview with The Brookings Institution.
“A lot of the increasing prosperity is going to the well-educated elites. It is not going to typical working people.”
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