Kidney transplantation is the treatment of choice for patients with end-stage renal disease requiring renal replacement therapy. Despite improvement of patient and graft survival in the recent decade, it has been hypothesized that people in lower socioeconomic groups have worse outcomes because they are more likely to be non-compliant or receive inadequate treatment. We retrospectively investigated this hypothesis by using education level as a proxy for socioeconomic status in 1731 kidney transplant recipients between 1984 and 2005. Patients were divided to four groups; 1) illiterate (n = 274, 15.8%), 2) under diploma (n = 807, 46.6%), 3) diploma (n = 437, 25.2%), and 4) above diploma (n = 213, 12.3%). Male and female were 1077 (62.2%) and 654 (37.8%), respectively. Women were more likely to be under diploma (459 of 654, 70.1% versus 622 of 1077, 57.7; P = 0.000). One , five, ten and fifteen- year patient survival rates were 94, 92, 83 and 59 for group 1 + 2, and were 97, 96, 91 and 84 for group 3 + 4, respectively (P = 0.000). Overall mortality rate was higher in recipients who had under diploma when compared to educated patients with equal or higher than diploma (76 of 1081, 7% and 22 of 650, 3.34%; P = 0.001). Furthermore, renal allograft survival were improved in group 3 and 4 compared to group1 and 2, graft survival rate were 87, 68, 44 and 18 versus 78, 59, 30 and 12 at one, five, ten and fifteen years after transplantation, P = 0.000 ; and renal allograft loss was seen more in low educational group (P = 0.000). Our study showed that people in lower socioeconomic groups have worse outcomes. Patients with higher levels of education had improved overall survival.