Ward, JL;
Viner, RM;
(2016)
Secondary Education and Health Outcomes in Young People from the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS).
PLoS ONE
, 11
(6)
, Article e0156883. 10.1371/journal.pone.0156883.
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Abstract
AIM: Education is one of the strongest social determinants of health, yet previous literature has focused on primary education. We examined whether there are additional benefits to completing upper secondary compared to lower secondary education in a middle-income country. METHODS: We performed a longitudinal analysis of the Cape Area Panel Study, a survey of adolescents living in South Africa. We undertook causal modeling using structural marginal models to examine the association between level of education and various health outcomes, using inverse probability weighting to control for sex, age, ethnicity, home language, income, whether employed in past year, region of birth, maternal educational status, marital status, whether currently pregnant and cognitive ability. Educational attainment was defined as primary (grades 1–7), lower secondary (grades 8–9) or upper secondary (grades 10–12). RESULTS: Of 3,432 participants, 165 (4.8%) had completed primary education, 646 (18.8%) lower secondary and 2,621 (76.3%) upper secondary. Compared to those completing lower secondary, males completing upper secondary education were less likely to have a health problem (OR 0.49; 95%CI 0.27–0.88; p = 0.02); describe their health as poor (0.52; 0.29–0.95; p = 0.03) or report that health interferes with daily life (0.54; 0.29–0.99; p = 0.047). Females were less likely to have been pregnant (0.45; 0.33–0.61; p<0.001) or pregnant under 18 (0.32; 0.22–0.46; p<0.001); and having had sex under 16 was also less likely (males 0.63; 0.44–0.91; p = 0.01; females 0.39; 0.26–0.58; p<0.001). Cigarette smoking was less likely (males 0.52; 0.38–0.70; p = <0.001; females 0.56; 0.41–0.76; p<0.001), as was taking illicit drugs in males (0.6; 0.38–0.96; p = 0.03). No associations were found between education and alcohol use, psychological distress, obesity, increased waist circumference or hypertension. CONCLUSION: Completing upper secondary education was associated with improved health outcomes compared with lower secondary education. Expanding upper secondary education offers middle-income countries an effective way of improving adolescent health.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Secondary Education and Health Outcomes in Young People from the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0156883 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0156883 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright: © 2016 Ward, Viner. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Population, Policy and Practice Dept |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1501098 |
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