Education, Health, and the Default American Lifestyle

• Published in: Journal of health and social behavior Vol. 56; no. 3; pp. 297 - 306
• Main Authors: Mirowsky, John, Ross, Catherine E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications, Inc 01-09-2015; SAGE Publications; American Sociological Association
• Subjects: Calories; Education; Educational attainment; Educational Status; Elevators; Exercise; Food production; Food products; Health Behavior; Health education; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Health Status; Humans; Hypertension; Knowledge; Leo G. Reeder Award Paper; Life Style; Lifestyle; Lifestyles; Medications; Obesity; Prescription drugs; Social behavior; United States; United States > US; sense of control; human capital; education; creative work; prescription drugs; health; calories; diet; lifestyle; physical activity
• ISSN: 0022-1465; 2150-6000
• DOI: 10.1177/0022146515594814

Education has a large and increasing impact on health in America. This paper examines one reason why. Education gives individuals the ability to override the default American lifestyle. The default lifestyle has three elements: displacing human energy with mechanical energy, displacing household food production with industrial food production, and displacing health maintenance with medical dependency. Too little physical activity and too much food produce imperceptibly accumulating pathologies. The medical industry looks for products and services that promise to soften the consequences but do not eliminate the underlying pathologies. This "secondary prevention" creates pharmacologic accumulation: prolonging the use of medications, layering them, and accruing their side effects and interactions. Staying healthy depends on recognizing the risks of the default lifestyle. Overriding it requires insight, knowledge, critical analysis, long-range strategic thinking, personal agency, and self-direction. Education develops that ability directly and indirectly, by way of creative work and a sense of controlling one's own life.