What’s the Secret to a Long, Healthy Life? Staying in School, a Study Finds.

健康长寿的秘诀是什么?一项研究发现，留在学校。

Keeping children in school could literally¹ lengthen² their lives as adults, according to a massive international research analysis published this week in the journal The Lancet Public Health.

根据本周发表在《柳叶刀·公共卫生》杂志上的一项大规模国际研究分析，让孩子上学确实可以延长寿命。

An international team of researchers analyzed³ more than 40 years of data on adult mortality from more than 600 studies in 59 countries, including the United States. They controlled for adults’ age, sex, and marital⁴ status, as well as their socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds.

一个国际研究小组分析了包括美国在内的59个国家的600多项研究中40多年来的成人死亡率数据。他们控制了成年人的年龄、性别、婚姻状况，以及他们的社会经济和人口背景。

For each additional year of schooling⁵, mortality for adults younger than 50 fell by nearly 3 percent, with smaller but still significant benefits for older adults, too.

每多受一年教育，50岁以下成年人的死亡率就会下降近3%，老年人的受益程度虽小，但仍然显著。

Completing 18 years of education—the equivalent of K-12 plus a four-year college degree—cut adult mortality by 34 percent. That’s similar to the level of health protection linked to eating a healthy, vegetable-heavy diet and getting plenty of exercise.

完成18年的教育——相当于K-12加上四年的大学学位——可以将成人死亡率降低34%。这与健康饮食、多蔬菜饮食和大量运动所带来的健康保护水平相似。

While this study looked only at adults, prior⁶ research has found that the benefits of education extend to the next generation, too, with every additional year of parents’ schooling reducing their children’s risk of death under age 5 by 3 percent for moms and 1.6 percent for dads.

虽然这项研究只针对成年人，但之前的研究发现，教育的好处也会延伸到下一代，父母每多受一年教育，孩子5岁以下死亡的风险对母亲来说降低3%，对父亲来说降低1.6%。