Long Run Returns to Education: Does Schooling Lead to an Extended Old Age?

Hans van Kippersluis, Owen O'Donnell and Eddy Van Doorslaer
Additional contact information
Hans van Kippersluis: Erasmus University Rotterdam

No 09-037/3, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: This discussion paper led to an article in the Journal of Human Resources (2011). Volume 46(4), pages 695-721.

While there is no doubt that health is strongly correlated with education, whether schooling exerts a causal impact on health is not yet firmly established. We exploit Dutch compulsory schooling laws in a Regression Discontinuity Design applied to linked data from health surveys, tax files and the mortality register to estimate the causal effect of education on mortality. The reform provides a powerful instrument, significantly raising years of schooling, which, in turn, has a large and significant effect on mortality even in old age. An extra year of schooling is estimated to reduce the probability of dying between ages of 81 and 88 by 2-3 percentage points relative to a baseline of 50 percent. High school graduation is estimated to reduce the probability of dying between the ages of 81 and 88 by a remarkable 17-26 percentage points but this does not appear to be due to any sheepskin effects of finishing high school on mortality beyond that predicted lin early by additional years of schooling.

Keywords: Health; Mortality; Education; Causality; Regression Discontinuity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D30 D31 I10 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-edu
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/09037.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Long-Run Returns to Education: Does Schooling Lead to an Extended Old Age? (2011)
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:tin:wpaper:20090037

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (discussionpapers@tinbergen.nl).