**1. Introduction**

Kitagawa and Hauser [1] did the first one of the most complete studies of mortality differentials by socioeconomic status (SES) in the United States. They found that higher SES groups exhibited lower rates of all-cause mortality than did lower SES groups. Later on, the Black Report on Inequalities in Health [2] published by the Department of Health and Social Security in the United Kingdom launched debates about widening socioeconomic inequalities in mortality. Significant differentials in mortality by SES had been identified despite a tremendous increase in life expectancy at birth after the World War II. Since then, many studies have pointed out the differences in mortality by socioeconomic status [1, 3–8]. Moreover, time trends in socioeconomic inequalities in mortality have shown a widening of the gap, in relative terms, in Europe as well as in North America [9–12]. Education, occupational status, and income are the most widely used indicators of socioeconomic status. In reality, socioeconomic stratification reflects benefits or returns of a given educational attainment. Therefore, education has become one of the most commonly used indicators of socioeconomic position. The reasons for its use are that educational level can be determined for all individuals (including older people and women). Educational attainment is normally completed by the early adult years and does not change later in life [13]. The educational level can be considered as a proxy not only for the socioeconomic position/class but also because better‐educated people lead a healthy lifestyle and can be more efficient consumers of health care. They are also more likely to take advantage of new technologies especially in treatment and prevention [6, 14, 15]. Therefore, the inverse association between education and mortality risk (the gradient) has been evidenced in many studies as well [6, 16–19]. Educational attainment is also a concrete indicator (compared to occupation) for policymakers when deciding the health or social policies and investments [15].

Educational inequalities in mortality are large in Central and Eastern Europe [20]. Mortality levels are particularly high among low educated men as well as women in the Czech Republic. Therefore, we assume that on average, higher levels of schooling cause people to live longer. The main purpose of our study is to find out to what extent the shifts in population structure toward higher education or mortality reduction based on the shifts of death rates toward one higher educational degree will impact on temporary life expectancy between ages 30 and 80. Changes in education‐associated excess mortality aimed at lowering the risks present a challenge for social and health policies. For instance, Woolf et al. [21] showed that more lives would be saved by eliminating education‐associated excess mortality than by medical advances only.

The contribution will address the following issues: First, to show long-term trends in life expectancy at birth in the Czech Republic,1 France, and USA. Second, to illustrate differentials in life expectancy at age 30 by education for selected European countries. Third, to present three scenarios that will show how shifts (in population structure or in mortality rates) toward a higher education contribute to the change in all-cause mortality level between ages 30 and 80 using temporary life expectancy indicator.

<sup>1</sup> All results are related to the territory of the current Czech Republic
