The Relationship between Forgone Health Care and High School Dropout: Evidence from US Adolescents

Giuseppe Migali and Eugenio Zucchelli

Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers from HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: High school dropout is an important policy issue and its determinants are a longstanding interest of economics. However, very little is known on the roles of noncognitive traits in influencing school dropoutdecisions. We employ voluntary forgone health care as a proxy for the underlying noncognitive traits that may induce adolescents to drop out and estimate its effects on early school attrition. We exploit data from the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and employ a series of flexible specifications with school fixed effects and cohort effects. Our models account for well-established determinants of dropout, including individual and parental characteristics, together with personality traits. Forgone health care consistently appears to be a statistically significant and substantial predictor of dropout among adolescents. We suggest that forgone health care could be used as a signalling device for policy makers targeting potential high school dropouts.

Keywords: forgone health care; high school dropout; Add Health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 I18 I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-hea
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Related works:
Working Paper: The relationship between forgone health care and high school dropout (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:hectdg:15/01

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