Timing is everything. A study by David Cutler confirms that graduates who enter the labor market during bad economic times experience lower income, lower life satisfaction, greater obesity, more smoking and drinking later in life. The study also noted that education plays a protective role for these outcomes, as educated individuals, even when entering the market at times of high unemployment, have a much lower incidence of these outcomes than their uneducated counterparts. The study was published in Social Science and Medicine.