The Effect of Education on Adult Health and Mortality: Evidence from Britain / Damon Clark, Heather Royer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clark, Damon.

Contributor:

Royer, Heather.

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w16013.

NBER working paper series no. w16013

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

The Effect of Education on Adult Health and Mortality

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2010.

Summary:

There is a strong, positive and well-documented correlation between education and health outcomes. There is much less evidence on the extent to which this correlation reflects the causal effect of education on health - the parameter of interest for policy. In this paper we attempt to overcome the difficulties associated with estimating the causal effect of education on health. Our approach exploits two changes to British compulsory schooling laws that generated sharp differences in educational attainment among individuals born just months apart. Using regression discontinuity methods, we confirm that the cohorts just affected by these changes completed significantly more education than slightly older cohorts subject to the old laws. However, we find little evidence that this additional education improved health outcomes or changed health behaviors. We argue that it is hard to attribute these findings to the content of the additional education or the wider circumstances that the affected cohorts faced (e.g., universal health insurance). As such, our results suggest caution as to the likely health returns to educational interventions focused on increasing educational attainment among those at risk of dropping out of high school, a target of recent health policy efforts.

Notes:

May 2010.

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