Are highly educated people more likely to get cancer? Or just more likely to get tested?

cancer screening test article

A person’s socioeconomic status plays a role in the type of cancer they might get, the Cancer Registry researchers found. They documented this relationship by analysing nearly 700 000 cancer cases over the past 30 years.

Men with high incomes and education are more often affected by three cancers compared to men with lower social and economic status. These are skin cancer, prostate cancer and testicular cancer.

Skin cancer also affects highly educated women more often than those with less education. Breast cancer is the second type of cancer that is more likely to affect more highly educated women.

But why are women with high socioeconomic status apparently more “prone” to breast cancer? This, too, may have to do with the fact that wealthier women are more likely to get checked for cancer.

“It has been shown that women with high socioeconomic status have higher participation rates for mammography screening. This may explain some of the differences,” [researcher Inger Kristin] Larsen said.

But it is also true that high socioeconomic status is linked to several risk factors for cancer.

“Women with high education have children a little later in life, among other things,” Larsen said.

Read full, original post: These four types of cancer are more likely to be detected in highly educated people

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