People with degrees

Yes. "Degrees" refers to college or university degrees. "The mortality rate of graduates" refers to the mortality rate of those who have "degrees", i.e. people with higher education.

Thank you.

given the a priori 'save the richest'

what a meaningless crockful it is to conclude that

'levelling health disparities' ( not just the poor) ie everyone except the rich

'will have a much bigger impact'

The math used in the statistics is not available to us, but I can readily see a number of pitfalls. The mortality of any cadre of the population is strongly influenced by its average or median age. What is the average of the reference population "with Degrees"? What is the average age of "everyone over 30?

Even a small difference here could grossly distort the implied mortality difference.

It sounds elementary but errors like this are VERY common in the statistical analyses that make their way into the public domain -- particularly such social analyses produced by folks with an axe to grind or publication stats to accumulate.

Some social "scientists", even with degrees, are quite stupid.

The information age has certainly multiplied the amount of accessible data out there, but the amount of meaningful information in it amounts to a rather large degrements. Worse, it can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The conclusion of the statistics might be a false correlation. Perhaps, many of those that get a higher education are inherently physically healthier, since if one's parents sent them to college, the parents were likely healthy enough to work at a job continuously to save and afford sending a child to college. Those healthy genes got passed on to the child that got an education.

In effect, similar to survival of the fittest, there might also be education for the fittest effecting the statistics?

Or, similar to physical exercise being a healthy pursuit, education might be exercise for the mind that also effects one health?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Marmot

oh dear oh dear oh dear

no offence intended mick

that quotation from your esteemed oeuvre was in need of the full text

best regards , how's the family, get the actuary to vet the summary next time