Longer schooling but not better off? A quasi-experimental study of the effect of compulsory schooling on biomarkers in France

Emilie Courtin, Vahé Nafilyan, Mauricio Avendano, Pierre Meneton, Lisa F. Berkman, Marcel Goldberg, Marie Zins and Jennifer B. Dowd

Social Science & Medicine, 2019, vol. 220, issue C, 379-386

Abstract: Less schooling is associated with increased biological risks for chronic disease, but whether increasing years of schooling through policy interventions reduces these risks remains unclear. We examine the effect of a major education reform introduced in 1959 that raised the minimum school leaving age from 14 to 16 years in France, offering a unique natural experiment. We assess the causal impact of increased schooling duration on 16 biomarkers of cardiovascular, metabolic, organ and immune function in a large cohort of men and women born around 1953. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design, we find that the reform led to a significant increase in schooling duration among children from disadvantaged families; but longer schooling did not translate into better biomarker profiles in adulthood. Eligibility to the reform had no impact on the biomarker profile of respondents from intermediate or high social class families, while it led to increased blood pressure and white cells counts in adulthood among those from low parental social class. These findings were robust across several sensitivity analyses. They emphasize the importance of considering the institutional context and the respondents’ social origins when evaluating the health effects of compulsory schooling reforms. Our results do not necessarily question the premise that education leads to better health, but they suggest that law-mandated increases in schooling alone may not improve the health of disadvantaged groups.

Keywords: Compulsory schooling law; Regression discontinuity design; Natural experiment; Biomarkers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953618306671
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:socmed:v:220:y:2019:i:c:p:379-386

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.11.033

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().