STUDENTS deciding which degree to study should opt for science or engineering if they want the best chance of living into old age.

A survey of mortality rates has found that arts students are 60 per cent more likely to die prematurely than their peers in the sciences.

It also confirms the reputation of medical students, finding that they run the highest risk of succumbing to an alcohol-related death.

The research, reported in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, tracked the fortunes of more than 8,000 male students aged 16 to 29 who attended Glasgow University between 1948 and 1968. The numbers who had died by June 30, 2000, were recorded.

Engineering students had the best health prospects; only 8.92 per cent of the sample had perished, compared with 9.25 per cent of the scientists, 9.89 per cent of medics, 12.88 per cent of lawyers and 14.81 per cent of arts students.

A rate of 30.66 per cent for divinity was regarded as unreliable by the researchers because the sample was small and the students tended to be older than the average age of 20 when they were examined by the university.

Peter McCarron, from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Queen’s University Belfast, who conducted the research, said that subject choices influenced a student’s economic position in later life and, as a rule, the richer they became, the healthier they were.

The most recent data on life expectancy shows that male members of the professional and managerial classes reach an average age of 78.5, compared with an age of 71.1 for unskilled workers.

Arts students were less likely to gain a secure, well-paid job, making them more likely to be stressed and malnourished.

They were also more likely to come from a poor background — which has influences on lifespan — with the lowest proportion of fathers coming from the top two social classes (46.7 per cent, compared with 68.4 per cent in medicine).

They were also more likely to smoke, and consequently had twice the rate of deaths from lung cancer and respiratory disease as those in the healthiest categories.

Science and engineering students were less likely to smoke and more likely to become richer — and therefore healthier.

Medical students also enjoyed the health benefits of later affluence, and even though they smoked the most as students they were also more likely to quit the habit when its damaging effects became apparent.

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