Efficiency of health investment: education or intelligence?

Govert Bijwaard and H. van Kippersluis

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

Abstract: In this paper we hypothesize that education is associated with a higher efficiency of health investment, yet that this efficiency advantage is solely driven by intelligence. We operationalize efficiency of health investment as the probability of dying conditional on a certain hospital diagnosis, and estimate a multistate structural equation model with three states: (i) healthy, (ii) hospitalized, and (iii) death. We use data from a Dutch cohort born around 1940 that links intelligence tests at age 12 to later-life hospitalization and mortality records. The results suggest that higher intelligence induces the higher educated to be more efficient users of health investment - intelligent individuals have a clear survival advantage for most hospital diagnoses - yet for unanticipated health shocks and diseases that require complex treatments such as COPD, education still plays a role.

Keywords: education; intelligence; health; multistate duration model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C41 I14 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-hea
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Related works:
Journal Article: Efficiency of Health Investment: Education or Intelligence? (2016)
Working Paper: Efficiency of Health Investment: Education or Intelligence? (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:hectdg:15/12

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