I know, therefore I am healthier? The role of education in health-related behaviors

Daniela Escobar López ()

No 17411, Documentos CEDE from Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE

Abstract: To know how better economic conditions impact health-related choices is critical when formulating public policies that aim at improving the population’s health, both in terms of outcomes and habits. Through the use of two national surveys, we investigate the effect of one additional year of schooling on the amount of time of physical activity done per week, and on the servings consumed of fruits and vegetables per day, in urban Colombia. Furthermore, intending to find causal links, we exploited as a source of exogenous variation a change in regulation concerning basic education implemented in the 1970s, in a 2SLS framework. Our results suggest that higher levels of education have a positive impact on food consumption habits, and on the undertaking of physical activity, especially when it is done for leisure. Conversely, transport-motivated physical activity is unaffected by higher educational attainment, which points to the presence of protective factors in low SES individuals. For the consumption part, we find that access is a necessary condition for individuals to make healthy diet choices.

Keywords: Health; behavior; education; urban; instrumental variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C26 I12 I21 I26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 72
Date: 2019-09-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://repositorio.uniandes.edu.co/bitstream/handle/1992/41097/dcede2019-33.pdf

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:col:000089:017411

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Documentos CEDE from Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Universidad De Los Andes-Cede ().