Cancer Death Rate Drop Tied to Education Levels

clipped from www.reuters.com clipped from www.reuters.com Declines in death rates from the four leading types of cancer in the United States since the early 1990s have been driven largely by progress among college-educated men and women The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, was the latest to illustrate how a person's health can be closely tied to socioeconomic factors such as education and income level. Researchers at the American Cancer Society and Emory University in Atlanta calculated death rates for lung, breast, prostate and colorectal cancer by level of education among U.S. blacks and whites ages 25 to 64 for 1993 through 2001. Death rates for each of these types of cancer decreased from 1993 to 2001 in men and women with at least 16 years of education -- a college degree -- except for lung cancer among black women, for whom death rates were stable, they found. Death rates among people with less than 12 years of education increased for lung cancer in white women and for colon cancer in black men