Unintended Health Costs of Gender Equalization

Cristina Bellés-Obrero, Sergi Jimenez-Martin and Judit Vall Castello

CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series from University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany

Abstract: In 1980, a few years after the democratization process, Spain raised the minimum working age from 14 to 16, while the compulsory education age remained at 14. This reform changed the within-cohort incentives to remain in the educational system. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we analyze the gender asymmetries in mortality generated by this change. The reform, through its effects on education, decreased mortality at ages 14-29 among men (6.4%) and women (8.9%), mainly from the reduction in deaths due to traffic accidents. However, the reform also increased mortality for prime-age women (30-45) by 7%. This last effect is driven by increases in HIV mortality, as well as by diseases related to the nervous and circulatory system. We show that health habits of women deteriorated as a consequence of the reform, but this was not the case for men. The gender differences in the impact of education on smoking and drinking are driven by the gender equalization process that the affected women were experiencing when the reform took place. All in all, these patterns help explain the narrowing age gap in life expectancy between women and men in many developed countries while, at the same time, they provide important policy implications for middle income countries that are undergoing those gender equalization process right now.

Keywords: minimum working age; education; mortality; gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I20 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66
Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp103 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2020_103v2

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series from University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany Kaiserstr. 1, 53113 Bonn , Germany.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CRC Office ().