Higher education and mortality: legacies of an authoritarian college contraction
Felipe González,
Luis Martinez (),
Pablo Muñoz and
Mounu Prem
No 965, Working Papers from Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance
Abstract:
We provide new evidence on the causal effect of higher education on mortality. Our empirical strategy exploits the reduction in college openings introduced by the Pinochet regime after the 1973 coup in Chile, which led to a sharp downward kink in college enrollment among those cohorts reaching college age in the following years. Using administrative data from the vital statistics, we document an upward kink in the age-specific yearly mortality rate of individuals in the affected cohorts. We estimate a negative effect of college on mortality between ages 34-74, which is larger for men, but also sizable for women. Individuals in the affected cohorts experience worse labor market outcomes, are more likely to be enrolled in the public health system, and report lower consumption of health services. This suggests that economic disad-vantage and limited access to care play an important mediating role in the link between higher education and mortality.
Date: 2023-09-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-hea and nep-lam
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sef/media/econ/research/workingpapers/wp965.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Higher Education and Mortality: Legacies of an Authoritarian College Contraction (2024) 
Working Paper: Higher Education and Mortality: Legacies of an Authoritarian College Contraction (2020) 
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:qmw:qmwecw:965
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Working Papers from Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nicholas Owen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).