Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2020
Advisor
Amber Todd
Abstract
Education is widely understood to be beneficial with regard to social opportunity, health outcomes, and quality of life scoring. Society opinion and literature are in accordance with this understanding. Much of the current literature, however, focuses on how higher education provides many of these benefits, but little investigates how early childhood education correlates with such outcomes. The objective of this study is to investigate what relationships there are between early childhood education performance and long-term health and quality of life outcomes. This investigation will explore Ohio’s third grade reading and math scores on standardized exams as compared to a national average and how each influences life expectancy, adult obesity rates, HIV prevalence, diabetes prevalence, premature death, number of poor physical health days, and median household income in all Ohio counties in 2020. Data were pulled from the county health rankings and roadmaps website and evaluated with Pearson correlation analyses using SPSS software. Each correlation was statistically significant, except that between math scores and obesity. Of note, the strongest correlations were between math scores and life expectancy (r= 0.51, p< 0.001), median household income (r= 0.592, p<0.001), and poor health days (r= -0.556, p<0.001). Overall, the results of this project demonstrate correlations between quality early childhood education and beneficial long-term health and quality of life outcomes.
Repository Citation
McNulty, R. (2020). Understanding the Relationship between Early Childhood Education and Long-term Health and Quality of Life Outcomes. Wright State University. Dayton, Ohio.
