The Education-Health Gradient: Revisiting the Role of Socio-Emotional Skills

Mette Gørtz and Miriam Gensowski

No 16300, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Is the education-health gradient inflated because both education and health are associated with unobserved socio-emotional skills? Revisiting the literature, we find that the gradient is reduced by 30-45% by fine-grained personality facets and Locus of Control. Traditional aggregated Big-Five scales, in contrast, have a much smaller and mostly insignificant contribution to the gradient. We decompose the gradient into its components with an order-invariant method, and use sibling-fixed effects to address that much of the observed education-health gradient reflects associations rather than causal relationships. There are education-health gradients even within sibling pairs; personality facets reduce these gradients by 30% or more. Our analyses use an extraordinarily large survey (N=28,261) linked to high-quality administrative registers with information on SES background and objective health outcomes.

Keywords: inequality; Health-Education Gradient; personality; Big Five-2 Inventory; sibling fixed effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I14 I24 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 64 pages
Date: 2023-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-ltv and nep-neu
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The education-health gradient: Revisiting the role of socio-emotional skills (2024)
Working Paper: The Education-Health Gradient: Revisiting the Role of Socio-Emotional Skills (2023)
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