Education and Gender Differences in Mortality Rates

Cristina Bellés-Obrero, Sergi Jimenez-Martin and Judit Vall Castello

No 2019-05, Working Papers from FEDEA

Abstract: We examine the gender asymmetries in the health benefits of acquiring further education at a time of increasing gender equality and women’s greater access to economic opportunities. A labor market reform in Spain in 1980 raised the minimum legal working age from 14 to 16, while the school-leaving age remained at 14. We apply a difference-in-difference strategy to identify the reform’s within-cohort effects, where treated and control individuals differ only in their month of birth. Although the reform improved the educational attainment of both women and men, the long-term effects over mortality differ by gender. We find that the reform decreased mortality at young ages (14-29) by 6.3% among men and by 8.9% among women. This was driven by a decrease (12.2% for men, 14.7% for women) in the probability of dying from external causes of death (accidents). However, we also find that the child labor reform increased mortality for prime-age women (30-45) by 6.3%. This effect is driven by increases in HIV mortality (11.6%), as well as by diseases of the nervous and circulatory system (8.7%).This patter helps explain the narrowing age gap in life expectancy between women and men in Spain.

Date: 2019-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-hea
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Related works:
Working Paper: Education and Gender Differences in Mortality Rates (2019)
Working Paper: Education and Gender Differences in Mortality Rates (2019)
Working Paper: Education and gender differences in mortality rates (2019)
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