Teenagers with diabetes are 6% less likely to graduate high school than their peers, finds a study by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health. Moreover, if a parent also has diabetes, the chances of her child going to college drops by 4-6%. The study is the first to examine the non-medical impact of diabetes, reports Jeanine Stein of the LA Times.
“Our results highlight two relatively understudied aspects of diabetes – its educational consequences, and the fact that they accumulate as early as adolescence and young adulthood,” said Jason M. Fletcher, at left, associate professor of public health at the Yale School of Public Health and the study’s lead author.
Data on about 15,000 people were examined from four waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The first wave included students in grade seven through 12; they were interviewed again about a year, seven years and 14 years later. The diabetes prevalence rate was 2.6%.
After controlling for a number of factors, researchers found that those with diabetes finished about three fewer months of schooling compared with those without the disease. Once they hit the working world, those with diabetes had employment reductions of 8% to 11%, and a decrease in yearly earnings of $1,500 to $6,000. If that discrepancy stayed the same over the years, it could translate into a lifetime earning penalty of $160,000 per person over 40 years.
“Our findings suggest that researchers, clinicians, and policy makers may need to consider the early, non-medical consequences of diabetes in constructing new policies and clinical practice,” said co-author Michael Richards, M.D., a doctoral student in the Yale School of Public Health in the news release.
The study is published in January's Health Affairs.
Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.
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