Dying Five Years Earlier

From the Inequalities blog, this stunning graph, which shows life expectancy of women in the U.S. by educational attainment:


Yes, that means that between 1990 and 2008, the life expectancy of women with less than a high school diploma (noted as <12) declined from over 78 years to just over 73, while it has increased for all other education cohorts.

It's interesting to note that the least-educated women used to have a greater life expectancy than the high school diploma group, and that the some-college group used to do better than the college-or-more group. And that the life expectancies of all four groups used to be generally more similar. Now they have diverged, just like income in the same time period.