Education, Employment, and Life Expectancy: A Cross-National Analysis of Social Determinants of Health
Mansoor Murtaza, Shireen Naz, Sohail Rehman, Sania Sarfraz and Sadia Mirbahar*
ABSTRACT
Life expectancy is an indicator of health of the population and is influenced by social, economic, environmental and health system factors. Although there has been an improvement in longevity, disparities between countries and socioeconomic status remain. The present study investigated the relationship between education level and employment-to-population ratio with life expectancy at birth. We performed a cross-national observational study with countryyear data from global health and socioeconomic databases. The analytical data set included 1,795 country-year observations from 171 countries from 2000 to 2021. The outcome was life expectancy at birth, and the explanatory variables were educational attainment and employment-to-population ratio. Descriptive statistics described patterns by World Bank income groups. Comparisons between income groups were made using Kruskal–Wallis tests, and associations were tested using Spearman rank correlation. Multivariate OLS regression models with hierarchical structure were adjusted for socioeconomic group, WHO region and calendar year. Mean life expectancy was 77.19 ± 6.54 years, educational attainment was 82.38 ± 21.58%, and employment-to-population ratio was 56.15 ± 9.95%. Life expectancy rose from 62.68 years in low-income countries to 81.34 years in high-income countries. Educational attainment was positively correlated with life expectancy (ρ = 0.577, 95% CI 0.540–0.608; p < 0.001), whereas employment showed no association (ρ = 0.003; p = 0.891). In the fully adjusted model, education remained positively associated with life expectancy (β = 0.620, 95% CI 0.249–0.990; p = 0.001), but employment was not (β = −0.128; p = 0.201). R² increased from 0.484 to 0.761. The results underscore the role of education in population-level determinants of longevity.
