ABSTRACT
Education improves health because it develops productive abilities. Education has a powerful influence on health for several reasons. The capacity for resource substitution is a major element of health-promoting learned effectiveness. Education is more important than standing and rank and more important than income and wealth in connecting better health with higher social status. Instead, the author found that education produces health in addition to prosperity, because both are desirable ends made achievable through learned effectiveness. Education's beneficial effects are pervasive, cumulative, and self-amplifying. Education reduces the negative effect of low income on health. The moderating effect of education suggests that the privation associated with low income can be reduced by raising the lowest levels of education in a society. Structural amplification concentrates poor health in a minority of persons with multiple related disadvantages. Individuals who gain control of their own lives relieve themselves and others of the undesirable consequences produced by an ill-managed life.
