TY  - JOUR
AU  - Clark,Damon
AU  - Royer,Heather
TI  - The Effect of Education on Adult Health and Mortality: Evidence from Britain
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 16013
PY  - 2010
Y2  - May 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16013
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16013.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Damon Clark
134 Martha van Renssalaer Hall
Policy Analysis and Management
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
Tel: 607-255-4821
E-Mail: dc738@cornell.edu

Heather Royer
Department of Economics
University of California, Santa Barbara
2127 North Hall
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Tel: 805/893-3797
Fax: 805/893-8830
E-Mail: royer@econ.ucsb.edu
AB  - There is a strong, positive and well-documented correlation between education and health outcomes. There is much less evidence on the extent to which this correlation reflects the causal effect of education on health - the parameter of interest for policy. In this paper we attempt to overcome the difficulties associated with estimating the causal effect of education on health. Our approach exploits two changes to British compulsory schooling laws that generated sharp differences in educational attainment among individuals born just months apart. Using regression discontinuity methods, we confirm that the cohorts just affected by these changes completed significantly more education than slightly older cohorts subject to the old laws. However, we find little evidence that this additional education improved health outcomes or changed health behaviors. We argue that it is hard to attribute these findings to the content of the additional education or the wider circumstances that the affected cohorts faced (e.g., universal health insurance). As such, our results suggest caution as to the likely health returns to educational interventions focused on increasing educational attainment among those at risk of dropping out of high school, a target of recent health policy efforts.
ER  -