Education (and learning) affects deaths of heart diseases and cancer. Say, my stupid, stupid dad during covid got ill (not with covid likely) and died from heart attack, because he was afraid to get infected by doctors (yes). Education also affects whether you become “poorer” or “richer”.

Heart diseases and cancer are affected by bad food habits, which are sometimes affected by executive dysfunction and addictive behavior, which also impede people from becoming “rich” directly.

And the longer you survive, the likelier you are to have successes yielding financial results.

So - maybe he doesn’t believe that, but I eagerly do, it just makes sense. Correlation is not causation.