Educational attainment and cardiovascular disease in the United States: A quasi-experimental instrumental variables analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

There is ongoing debate about whether education or socioeconomic status (SES) should be inputs into cardiovascular disease (CVD) prediction algorithms and clinical risk adjustment models. It is also unclear whether intervening on education will affect CVD, in part because there is controversy regarding whether education is a determinant of CVD or merely correlated due to confounding or reverse causation. We took advantage of a natural experiment to estimate the population-level effects of educational attainment on CVD and related risk factors.

Methods and findings

We took advantage of variation in United States state-level compulsory schooling laws (CSLs), a natural experiment that was associated with geographic and temporal differences in the minimum number of ye

SUBMITTER: Hamad R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6592509 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature