The impact of education on mental health: evidence from compulsory education law in China

Tianheng Wang

Applied Economics Letters, 2022, vol. 29, issue 16, 1515-1521

Abstract: This paper investigates the causal effect of education on mental health by using the exogenous variation in years of schooling arising from the compulsory schooling law implemented in China during the 1980s and 1990s. Using data from China Family Panel Studies, the paper finds evidence for significant protective effects of educational attainment on mental health. The results show that one extra year of schooling improves the mental health scale by 0.14 standard deviations. Furthermore, the mechanism analysis shows that education positively affects self-assessed income and social status and improves individuals’ cognitive ability.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2021.1946002 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:apeclt:v:29:y:2022:i:16:p:1515-1521

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEL20

DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2021.1946002

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Letters is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics Letters from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().