Education may not improve happiness, says study

LONDON: Getting a good education may not improve your chances of happiness in life, according to new study.

Researchers from the University of Warwick examined socioeconomic factors related to high mental well being, such as level of education and personal finances.

Low educational attainment is strongly associated with mental illness but the research team wanted to find out if higher educational attainment is linked with mental wellbeing.

The team found all levels of educational attainment had similar odds of high mental well-being.

High mental wellbeing was defined as 'feeling good and functioning well'.

People with high levels of mental well being manage to feel happy and contented with their lives more often than those who don't because of the way they manage problems and challenges especially in relationships with others.

"These findings are quite controversial because we expected to find the socioeconomic factors that are associated with mental illness would also be correlated with mental wellbeing," lead author Professor Sarah Stewart-Brown said.

"So if low educational attainment was strongly associated with mental illness, high educational attainment would be strongly connected to mental well-being. But that is not the case," said Stewart-Brown.

Other surprising results from the study included high levels of mental wellbeing among Afro-Caribbeans, especially men.

"Given the well-recognised association between ethnicity and detention under the Mental Health Act and the more general associations between mental illness and ethnicity, we were very surprised to find substantially increased odds of high mental well-being among minority ethnic groups," said Stewart-Brown.

The team used existing data from the Health Survey for England (HSE) for 2010 and 2011 in which the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) was administered to 17,030 survey participants across both years.

Stewart-Brown added that the correlates of high mental well-being are different from those of low mental well-being, but the latter closely mirror the correlates of mental illness.

The study was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.