March 12, 2026 | News

Education Matters More Than Income to Reduce Premature Adult Mortality in India

Moradhvaj Dhakad joined the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in November 2025. He came to MPIDR as Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellow. Before joining MPIDR Moradhvaj was a research scholar in the Multidimensional Demographic Modeling Research Group of the IIASA Population and Just Societies Program at IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) and also worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna.

During his time at IIASA, he collaborated with Erich Striessnig, Nandita Saikia, Samir K.C. and Wolfgang Lutz to explore why mortality among working-age adults remains high in India despite rapid economic growth. They found that education, at both the individual and community levels, was more strongly associated with lower premature mortality than income or household wealth.

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Preventing premature death is a key objective of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Economic growth is often expected to improve survival by increasing resources for social protection, public health, and healthcare systems. While India has experienced sustained economic growth, the country accounts for around one fifth of global deaths among adults of working age, and about half of all deaths in India occur before the age of 60, amounting to around three million premature deaths each year. This places India well above the global average, with important consequences for households and the wider economy.

Using nationally representative data from the India Human Development Survey, which follows individuals over time, the IIASA-led study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in February 2026 examined the relative importance of education and economic resources for mortality among adults of working age (15–59) in India.

The analysis follows more than 115,000 individuals surveyed in 2004–05 and tracked through 2011–12. The authors compared how educational attainment and household economic status are related to the risk of dying during working ages, distinguishing between individual- and community-level effects. The models account for health status, age, marital status, caste, religion, health-related behaviors, employment, place of residence, and region.

The results show that adults with higher levels of education are less likely to die prematurely across all household wealth groups. In contrast, higher household wealth does not show a similarly consistent relationship with mortality once education is taken into account. For both men and women, differences in mortality by education level are larger than those observed by wealth level.

“Education shows a stronger association with survival at working ages than household wealth,” explains lead author Moradhvaj Dhakad. “This relationship remains after accounting for health conditions, employment, and other background characteristics.”

Edited excerpt of the IIASA press release.

Original Publication

Dhakad, M., Striessnig, E., Saikia, N., KC, S., Lutz, W. : For reducing premature adult mortality in India education matters more than income in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 2026, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2503809123