What Education Levels Indicate

Formal education serves three functions in modern societies: (1) developing abilities through progressive instruction and training, (2) grading individual levels of development and gating advancement, and (3) regulating access to occupations and jobs. Developed nations all measure attainment by years and degrees, in a manner increasingly comparable across nations.

The years measure progressive levels, each attainable by most students within one school year of effort. The degrees certify the completion of specific multiyear programs. Education level refers both to years and degrees; it indicates the level of ability developed, the exposure to progression and selection, and the opportunities regulated as a consequence. Together these influence an individual’s exposure and response to stressors throughout adulthood.

Lower Exposure to Stressful Situations. The abilities and opportunities provided by higher levels of education reduce exposure to stressful situations. Researchers generally categorize stressors as events (acute stressors) or conditions (chronic stressors.) Life-change events are transitions that require personal adaptation. They can be desirable (e.g., getting married) or undesirable (e.g., becoming widowed).

They also can be controllable (e.g., quitting a job) or uncontrollable (e.g., getting fired). The more undesirable and uncontrollable the events, the more distress they produce. Higher levels of education shift the balance of events. Controllable and desirable ones become more likely; uncontrollable and undesirable ones become less likely.

An event such as a job promotion produces some stress as the individual adapts to the new demands, but the positive implications moderate the stress and make it stimulating rather than disturbing. In addition, it marks a transition to new circumstances with a more favorable balance of events and greater social and economic resources. An event such as getting fired or laid off demands as much or more adaptation, but also has the demoralizing implications of inadequacy and impending hard times.

In addition, it often marks a transition into prolonged unemployment, economic hardship, family strife, lower social standing, and diminished opportunity. Those situations are stressful, and they shift the likely balance of subsequent events unfavorably.

Higher levels of education help individuals avoid chronic stressors, characterized by a prolonged discrepancy between goals and means. Chronic stressors include prolonged unemployment; economic hardship and poverty; work that is repetitious, closely supervised, or boring; neighborhood disorder and decay; unsupportive or conflict-ridden relationships; parenting with no partner or an unhelpful one; solitary caring for an aging parent or other impaired dependent; and conflicting demands of work and family.

Chronic stressors are especially harmful to emotional and physical health. Their persistence erodes emotional, physical, and social resources and discourages corrective action. For example, when people are unemployed, they need or want paid work but are not able to find an acceptable position. Being unemployed for months can use up personal and household savings.

The shortage of money can lead to economic hardship, which is not being able to buy things the household needs, such as food, clothes, transportation, medicine, and medical care, and not being able to pay the rent or other bills. Repeated failures to find a job become increasingly demoralizing and discouraging.

Each failure makes people’s emotional need for success greater while making success on the next try seem less likely. The need for comfort and relief can encourage people to overeat sugary and fatty foods, drink heavily, abuse drugs, engage in sexual indiscretions, or escape obsessively into television, movies, novels, games, and the like. Meanwhile, the economic shortfalls get larger with time.

Supportive relationships can ease the individuals’ emotional and economic strains, but they do it by spreading the burden to others. The more intense and persistent the hardship, the greater the stain put on relationships. Tensions mount, expressed in irritation, blaming, anger, and strife that may include violence. The others become unsupportive and perhaps even hostile. Relationships break up.

The higher the level of education, the less likely individuals will get into situations of chronic stress, the better they cope if in them, and the quicker they get out of or correct the situation.