Explaining the Rise in Educational Gradients in Mortality / David M. Cutler, Fabian Lange, Ellen Meara, Seth Richards, Christopher J. Ruhm.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cutler, David M.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Lange, Fabian.

Meara, Ellen.

Richards, Seth.

Ruhm, Christopher J.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w15678.

NBER working paper series no. w15678

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2010.

Summary:

The long-standing inverse relationship between education and mortality strengthened substantially later in the 20th century. This paper examines the reasons for this increase. We show that behavioral risk factors are not of primary importance. Smoking has declined more for the better educated, but not enough to explain the trend. Obesity has risen at similar rates across education groups, and control of blood pressure and cholesterol has increased fairly uniformly as well. Rather, our results show that the mortality returns to risk factors, and conditional on risk factors, the return to education, have grown over time.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2010.