A Portuguese sociologist has investigated how a person’s social class, education and access to a hospital (or rather living near a health centre) are associated with longevity.
A patient who lives in the middle of Alentejo, which is a small village situated far away from any hospital does not necessary live longer or shorter than a person who lives in Lisbon, where hospitals are near.
However, Ricardo Antunes who is a sociologist from the Lisbon Institute’s Centre for Sociology Studies and investigation (CIES) says that wealthy people tend to live on average ten more years than their less educated and poorer counterparts. So in summary, it can be said that longevity is highly associated to a person’s social class and not to a where the person really lives.
In the research conducted on ‘Social Classes and health imbalances’, Mr. Antunes evaluated clinical files of 1,935 individuals. The medical history of people who deceased in hospitals in Lisbon and Beja in 2004 was studied. This gave a thorough overview of the generation of people who were born in the 1920s to 1930s, or in other words, those who deceased in their 70s or 80s.
The diseases or causes of death were identified. The conclusion of the study was that in explaining the difference in health, social class was more important than geography.
The study was financed by Foundation for Science and Technology. The aim of the study was to evaluate longevity between two types of professionals – Those who had a degree like teacher, lawyer and engineers to a lower category of works like manual labourers. The difference in the longevity between the two groups was significantly. In Lisbon professionals with a degree lived on average 13.8 years longer and in Beja 11.5 years longer than non-degree holders.
The study demonstrated that people who have a higher education and were wealthier do live longer regardless of their region of residence.
Professionals having a degree did on average live up to the age of 82 years while manual labourers lived to an estimated age of 68.8. Most cases of death were cancer and strokes for the highly educated category. Degree holders died from strokes at an average age of 84.8 years while the less educated people died from stroke at the age of 75 years.
The differences in the causes of death and age were in a straight sense linked to the level of access to information or education.
People of higher social class did after retirement focus on healthy lifestyles. This tended to prevent diseases. However, manual workers who had retired adopted a more hazardous lifestyle. This effort or carelessness continued until the subject deceased.
Ricardo Antunes found in his study that people who were less educated began to smoke at an early age. They did also smoke more and were prone to become heavy drinkers as well. Eventually, most premature death occurred for the working class.
What really illustrated that money was the key factor for longevity was when figures about businessmen were revealed. Most of the businessmen were poorly educated – they had only achieved primary education.
Nonetheless, these affluent people had a great access of finance, and they did therefore, live life with more comfort, and healthier lifestyles. Their longevity was increased as a result of a healthy standard of living.
According to the author, what really offers longer life was ‘the ‘marriage’ between material resources and good levels of education’ that tended to boost good health significantly.
The fact that social class is related to health-associated inequalities is not an isolated case for Portugal. It has been found by many international studies that similar patterns exist across the countries.
Ricardo Antunes did, however, highlight that in countries where income distribution is more equal such as in Norway and Sweden the patterns aren’t that visible. Yet, any measures used to fight against inequality in income are deemed to have some consequences on human longevity and health.
Source: The Portugal News
Sun, Feb 13, 2011
Anti Aging, Gerontology, Health And Aging, Longevity