A recent paper by two sociologists purports to show that sending your children to college is a great way to extend your life. Accessing the paper requires a subscription, but it is discussed in this news article and this post.
In the paper, the authors compare the life spans of people whose children did and did not go to college. They do some statistical adjustments in making this comparison, and to a rough approximation are comparing the longevity of parents who have similar finances and education but whose children have different levels of education. Their key finding: Parents with college-educated children live longer.
“Adult offspring’s educational attainments have independent effects on their parents’ mortality, even after controlling for parents’ own socioeconomic resources,” the authors say. They hypothesize that college-educated children encourage their parents to engage in healthier behaviors, and that’s why they live longer.