The non-effect of one's education on health

Does compulsory education lower mortality?

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Valerie Albouy and Laurent Lequien

Recent studies have claimed to show a significant causal impact of education on health status. Their empirical strategy usually relied on changes in compulsory schooling laws.

Using a French longitudinal dataset, we focus on the effect of school leaving age on mortality at later ages. The two identifying shocks are the Zay and Berthoin reforms, which respectively raised the minimum school leaving age to 14 and 16 years. We implement a non-parametric regression discontinuity design, comparing cohorts born immediately before or after the reforms, and a parametric two-stage approach using information from a larger part of our sample.

None of these approaches reveals a significant causality of education on health. Despite the fact that these reforms increased education levels, and that subsequent declines in mortality are observed, none of these declines appears to be significant. We conclude with a discussion on possible limitations of these two reforms as identifying devices.

Journal of Health Economics Volume 28, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 155-168

The non-effect of parents education on health

Parental education and child health: Evidence from a schooling reform

This paper investigates the impact of parental education on child health outcomes. To identify the causal effect we explore exogenous variation in parental education induced by a schooling reform in 1947, which raised the minimum school leaving age in the UK. Findings based on data from the National Child Development Study suggest that increasing the school leaving age by 1 year had little effect on the health of their offspring. Schooling did however improve economic opportunities by reducing financial difficulties among households.

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Maarten Lindeboom, Ana Llena-Nozal and Bas van der Klaauw

Journal of Health Economics Volume 28, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 109-131