Long Lasting Health Effects of Soviet Education

Joan Costa-Font and Anna Nicinska ()
Additional contact information
Anna Nicinska: University of Warsaw

No 18304, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Education systems serve various purposes, including the enhancement of later-life health, though its effect can differ by socio-political regime. This paper examines the effects of exposure to communist education, which exposed children to a distinct curcurriculum and ideological content on later-life health. We exploit a novel dataset that collects information on compulsory education reforms in several European countries, with different cohorts exposed and unexposed to Soviet communist education. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) design, we show that while the extension of compulsory education improved some relevant measures of health, communist education encompassed an additional health-enhancing effect. We document that the effect remains robust when using staggered DiD approaches and various robustness tests, and that it is explained by the priority given to physical education in school curricula, together with an increased likelihood of marriage.

Keywords: physical activity; later-life health; health education gradient; communist education; Europe; Soviet Communism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I26 P36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18304.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Long Lasting Health Effects of Soviet Education (2025)
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:iza:izadps:dp18304

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().