The Long-Term Impact of Education on Mortality and Health: Evidence from Sweden

Gawain Heckley, Martin Fischer, Ulf-G. Gerdtham, Martin Karlsson, Gustav Kjellsson and Therese Nilsson ()

No 2018:8, Working Papers from Lund University, Department of Economics

Abstract: There is a well-documented large positive correlation between education and health and yet it remains unclear as to whether this is a causal relationship. Potential reasons for this lack of clarity include estimation using different methods, analysis of different populations and school reforms that are different in design. In this paper we assess whether the type of school reform, the instrument and therefore subgroup identified and the modelling strategy impact the estimated health returns to education. To this end we use both Regression Discontinuity and Difference in Differences applied to two Swedish school reforms that are different in design but were implemented across overlapping cohorts born between 1938 and 1954 and follow them up until 2013. We find small and insignificant impacts on overall mortality and its common causes and the results are robust to regression method, identification strategy and type of school reform. Extending the analysis to hospitalisations or self-reported health and health behaviours, we find no clear evidence of health improvements due to increased education. Based on the results we find no support for a positive causal effect of education on health.

Keywords: Health returns to education; demand for medical care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I18 I26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2018-03-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://lucris.lub.lu.se/ws/portalfiles/portal/194853220/WP18_8 Full text (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:hhs:lunewp:2018_008

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Lund University, Department of Economics School of Economics and Management, Box 7080, S-22007 Lund, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Iker Arregui Alegria ().