Questioning earlier results showing a significant decrease in life expectancy among US white women with less than a high school education, John Bound, Arline Geronimus, Javier Rodriguez, and Tim Waidmann conducted new research that measured education using a relative rank in the distribution rather than years of education. They found no evidence that survival probabilities declined dramatically, 1990 to 2010, for the bottom quartile of educational attainment among white women. Rather, they say, whites in higher socioeconomic quartiles showed gains in life expectancy, while socioeconomically disadvantaged groups stagnated, which increased SES-based health inequality. “Although the alarm generated by the dramatic findings of earlier studies was likely exaggerated, our more modest and relative findings are both more plausible and still disturbing,” said Geronimus.

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