Being educated could boost your chances to live longer new research suggests.

American Cancer Society epidemiologists led by Ahmedin Jemal, PhD working with scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics tracked death certificate data on more than 3.5 million deaths that occurred in 43 states and Washington D.C. from 1993 to 2001.

The researchers looked at data for all causes of deaths as well as for seven of the leading causes: cancer, heart disease, stroke, accidents, HIV infection, diabetes, chronic lung disease.

The study found that during 1993-2001, death rates from any of the mentioned diseases fell for people with at least 16 years of education with the largest decrease in black men. However, those death rates held steady or rose for people with less than 12 years of education.

The annual percent increase was largest among white women with less than 12 years of education (3.2 percent per year), but was also statistically significant (0.7 percent per year) in white women who had completed high school.

“Our principal finding is that socioeconomic inequalities in mortality continue to increase in the US due to reductions in death rates among the most educated combined with lack of progress or worsening trends in the least educated,” Dr. Jemal and colleagues wrote in the May 14 issue of Public Library of Science One.

There are a few reasons for this gap of overall mortality rates between Americans with less than high school education and college graduates. It seems that people with more education have better financial resources, easy access to health insurance and stable employment and more health literacy.

“Social and economic factors increase the vulnerability of low socioeconomic communities to risk factors such as smoking, obesity, physical inactivity hypertension and HIV infection,” the researchers concluded.