Variations in the relation between education and cause-specific mortality in 19 European populations: A test of the “fundamental causes” theory of social inequalities in health. Mackenbach
Mackenbach et all explain how socioeconomic status has been thought to be a fundamental cause since it encompases a group of resources like knowledge, power, money, connections that protect people's health regardless of other mechanisms that might cause disease. Therefore the availability of means to achieve health goals are the main factor where socioeconomic status and health association resides. They compared inequalities in mortality on preventable and non-preventable conditions and then compared if this was larger in countries where social inequalities were larger.
They found that total mortality is higher among the low educated compared to the highly educated in all countries included, but the strength of the relation was variable by cause of death and population. I thought it was very interesting that inequalities were larger for death causes that were associated with medical interventions, injury prevention, and subject to behavior change. In women, this difference was more evident in causes subject to behavior change.
These results are relevant since this is compatible with the hypothesis that people with higher access to education have an array of resources they can access to achieve health goals. This is also compatible with access to healthcare and the inequalities found in causes associated with medical interventions. I think it would be interesting to see if these results are also valid for countries in Latin America.