To dig into this questions, the authors use data from the National Vital Statistical System (NVSS). The authors main measure is the expected number of years a 25 year old can expect to live before his or her 75th birthday. This measure has its limitations as it ignores any survival benefit for those over 75, but does do a better job at capturing the impact of deaths of despair that the authors had written about previously.
In the analysis, the authors find that by 2018, Americans with a 4-year college degree (i.e., a BA) could expect 48.2 out of a possible 50 years, compared with only 45.1 years for those without a BA.
Further, the authors find that the college degree vs. no college degree gap in life expectancy is larger than the black-white gap.
On a positive note, the racial divides in life expectancy at age 25 narrowed by 70% between 1990 and 2018, On the other hand, it is likely that both the racial and education divide in life expectancy could be exacerbated by COVID-19.