Lower Education Correlates with More Religion, More Theism, Less Life?
Does this mean, then, that religion also correlates negatively with health — that the more religious a person is, the less healthy and shorter their lives are?
Rationally Speaking has an interesting post discussing the connection between health and education. According to a story in The New York Times, the biggest and most consistent predictor of living a longer, healthier life is higher rates of education:
Year after year, in study after study, says Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, education “keeps coming up.”
And, health economists say, those factors that are popularly believed to be crucial — money and health insurance, for example, pale in comparison.
Dr. Smith explains: “Giving people more Social Security income, or less for that matter, will not really affect people’s health. It is a good thing to do for other reasons but not for health.” Health insurance, too, he says, “is vastly overrated in the policy debate.”
Instead, Dr. Smith and others say, what may make the biggest difference is keeping young people in school. A few extra years of school is associated with extra years of life and vastly improved health decades later, in old age. It is not the only factor, of course.
It's not clear exactly why this occurs, though:
Dr. Lleras-Muney and others point to one plausible explanation — as a group, less educated people are less able to plan for the future and to delay gratification. If true, that may, for example, explain the differences in smoking rates between more educated people and less educated ones.
Smokers are at least twice as likely to die at any age as people who never smoked, says Samuel Preston, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania. And not only are poorly educated people more likely to smoke but, he says, “everybody knows that smoking can be deadly,” and that includes the poorly educated.
But education, Dr. Smith at RAND finds, may somehow teach people to delay gratification. For example, he reported that in one large federal study of middle-aged people, those with less education were less able to think ahead. “Most of adherence is unpleasant,” Dr. Smith says. “You have to be willing to do something that is not pleasant now and you have to stay with it and think about the future.”
Is it really just a question of being able and willing to plan ahead? Rationally Speaking also cites a BBC story which offers some interesting ideas:
The poll of 4,000 people was carried out by the charity Cancer Research UK. Those responding were asked if they thought they could cut their risk of developing cancer - or whether it was out of their hands.
In total, 27% of the people questioned said fate ruled whether they would be affected by the disease. Among those from the most deprived areas, the figure rose to 43% and among those from the most privileged areas, it fell to 14%. ...But the survey also found 34% of smokers and 36% of over 65s believed that getting cancer was down to fate.
Those in "privileged" areas will likely have more education than those in "deprived" areas, so it appears that more education leads to less belief in fate and greater ability to take control of your own life. So it seems like it's not just the ability and willingness to plan ahead that is correlated with education, but perhaps the realization that one can direct one's own life and is not left to the whims of other forces and powers.
Here, then, we return to religion and theism. We can't assume that because more education leads to less religion and more health, then therefore less religion leads to more health — that would be an invalid inference. After all, not everyone who has more education is less religious, so it's possible that all the people who have more education and more religion also have good health.
On the other hand, we do have to contend with the fact that people with less education apparently are more willing to place their lives in the hands of fate and other forces, rather than assume responsibility for it themselves. That is quite compatible with religion, given how many people are willing to place their lives and futures in the hands of God rather than acting on their own and for their own good. It may be that more education leads to better health and less religion for similar reasons: people with better educations are more willing and able to assume responsibility for their lives. It may be that they are less willing to simply put their futures in the hands of fate, destiny, gods, or whatever.
Whatever the nature of the relationship here is, it's worth pondering.
Comments
Misery makes crooks rich. They feed on every human weakness. They are gifted at mining something out of nothing.
Locus of control.
That, I think, is the psychological variable being discussed here. Educated people have an internal locus of control (or are internal) and less educated people have an external locus of control.
Back when I was in grad school, we discussed these issues at length. I forget the name of the psychologist who first coined the term “locus of control” (I suppose it’s easily looked up), but as I recall he died. Julian Roter? And, as is the case with many psychologists, the interest in locus of control pretty much died along with him. Maybe it’s time to resurrect this interesting and important personality variable.