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[VAN DELL JORDAN <vdjor AT yahoo.com>]

I've heard from more than one source that continuous
lifetime learning is one of four things known to
increase life expectancy. 
I went to night school several years after I ran out
of money for full time.  After several years I went
back and took ten years of part time to get my degree
in my 40s.  As soon as I retired I went back to school
and probably will for the rest of my life.
Of course learning does not have to involve formal
school but I think the scheduling and other
requirements add something to it.
Van Dell 

 --- Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com> wrote:

> A Surprising Secret to a Long Life: Stay in School
> 
> 
> 
> Michael Stravato for The New York Times
> Irma Lara, 75, who came to the United States from
> Mexico when she was  
> 26, spends time exercising at a community center in
> Texas.
> 
> By GINA KOLATA
> Published: January 3, 2007
> James Smith, a health economist at the RAND
> Corporation, has heard a  
> variety of hypotheses about what it takes to live a
> long life —  
> money, lack of stress, a loving family, lots of
> friends. But he has  
> been a skeptic.
> 
> The New Age
> Piece in a Puzzle
> This is last of four articles looking at the science
> of aging. The  
> articles will remain online at nytimes.com/aging.
> Multimedia
> 
> 
> Yes, he says, it is clear that on average some
> groups in every  
> society live longer than others. The rich live
> longer than the poor,  
> whites live longer than blacks in the United States.
> Longevity, in  
> general, is not evenly distributed in the
> population. But what, he  
> asks, is cause and what is effect? And how can they
> be disentangled?
> 
> He is venturing, of course, into one of the
> prevailing mysteries of  
> aging, the persistent differences seen in the life
> spans of large  
> groups. In every country, there is an average life
> span for the  
> nation as a whole and there are average life spans
> for different  
> subsets, based on race, geography, education and
> even churchgoing.
> 
> But the questions for researchers like Dr. Smith are
> why? And what  
> really matters?
> 
> The answers, he and others say, have been a
> surprise. The one social  
> factor that researchers agree is consistently linked
> to longer lives  
> in every country where it has been studied is
> education. It is more  
> important than race; it obliterates any effects of
> income.
> 
> Year after year, in study after study, says Richard
> Hodes, director  
> of the National Institute on Aging, education
> “keeps coming up.”
> 
> And, health economists say, those factors that are
> popularly believed  
> to be crucial — money and health insurance, for
> example, pale in  
> comparison.
> 
> Dr. Smith explains: “Giving people more Social
> Security income, or  
> less for that matter, will not really affect
> people’s health. It is  
> a good thing to do for other reasons but not for
> health.”
> 
> Health insurance, too, he says, “is vastly
> overrated in the policy  
> debate.”
> 
> Instead, Dr. Smith and others say, what may make the
> biggest  
> difference is keeping young people in school. A few
> extra years of  
> school is associated with extra years of life and
> vastly improved  
> health decades later, in old age.
> 
> 
> 
> The rest of the story is at:
> 
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/health/03aging.html?
> 
> em&ex=1167973200&en=fea7675a1f22759c&ei=5087%0A
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