On the identification of the effect of education on health: a comment on Fonseca et al. (2020)

Pedro Albarrán, Marisa Hidalgo-Hidalgo and Inigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe
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Pedro Albarrán: Fundamentos del Análisis Económico (FAE), Universidad de Alicante

SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, 2022, vol. 13, issue 4, No 2, 649-661

Abstract: Abstract In this note we revisit the paper by Fonseca et al. (Series 11: 83-103, 2020) who find that education has a positive effect on health. They use several compulsory schooling reforms as instruments for education. Our objective is to replicate this causal finding, so we start by thoroughly discussing their identification strategy. In particular, we emphasize the importance of carefully defining birth cohort groups and using country-specific time trends. Once we take these issues into account, we show that the instrument they use is too weak.

Keywords: Health; Education; Instrumental variables; Compulsory schooling laws (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1007/s13209-022-00260-0

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