ABSTRACT
Education improves health because it increases effective agency. According to the human capital theory of learned effectiveness, education enables people to coalesce health-producing behaviors into a coherent lifestyle. The concept of human capital implies that education improves health because it increases effective agency on the part of individuals. Formal education indicates investment in "human capital"—the productive capacity developed, embodied, and stocked in human beings themselves. Education also develops broadly effective habits and attitudes such as dependability, good judgment, motivation, effort, trust, and confidence, as well as skills and abilities. The human capital theory of learned effectiveness states that educated, instrumental people merge otherwise unrelated habits and ways into a healthy lifestyle that consequently behaves as a coherent trait. Drinking is far less ubiquitous in its health consequences than are smoking or inadequate physical activity. The sense of personal control overlaps to a large extent with self-efficacy despite Bandura's claim that sense of control and self-efficacy are distinct concepts.
