The Effect of College Education on Health

Kasey Buckles, Ofer Malamud, Melinda Morrill and Abigail Wozniak

No 6659, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We exploit exogenous variation in college completion induced by draft-avoidance behavior during the Vietnam War to examine the impact of college completion on adult mortality. Our preferred estimates imply that increasing college completion rates from the level of the state with the lowest induced rate to the highest would decrease cumulative mortality by 28 percent relative to the mean. Most of the reduction in mortality is from deaths due to cancer and heart disease. We also explore potential mechanisms, including differential earnings, health insurance, and health behaviors, using data from the Census, ACS, and NHIS.

Keywords: college education; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I23 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2012-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published - published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2016, 50, 99-114.

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Working Paper: The Effect of College Education on Health (2013)
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