Cumulative advantage, educational attainment, and late life health status

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

There is a strong association between economic advantage and late life health, but few studies have examined the distinct relationship between various aspects of socioeconomic status (income, education) and health (self-rated health, functional impairment, chronic conditions). We examined these relationships using 1992—2005 Medicare Current Be neficiary Survey data representative of the U.S. Medicare population aged 65 and older. Adjusting for current income, insurance coverage and healthcare access does little to explain the education/health association. Other pathways may be more important in explaining this relationship. Nonetheless, despite the passage of many intervening years, schooling completed early in the lifecourse is powerfully predictive of late-life health.