Education, risk perceptions, and health behaviors

Kai You

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: It is acknowledged that there exists an association between education and health behaviors, but channels through which educational gradients resulted are not well investigated. We propose that personal risk perceptions of developing cancers in the future account for part of the gradients. To explore it, we merge two datasets to test causal effects at both individual and MSA levels. Endogeneity is considered and eased. We find that risk perceptions significantly enhance people’s smoking decisions, and prostate cancer and colorectal cancer screening. Educational gradients are robust perceived risks. It is suggested to improve health behaviors, health service providers and public health manager should take measures to enhance personal perceived risk toward diseases.

Keywords: Education; Risk Perceptions; and Health Behaviors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-12-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/35535/1/MPRA_paper_35535.pdf original version (application/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:pra:mprapa:35535

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().