Abstract
This paper sheds light on the causal relationship between education and health outcomes. We combine three surveys (SHARE, HRS and ELSA) that include nationally representative samples of people aged 50 and over from fourteen OECD countries. We use variation in the timing of educational reforms across these countries as an instrument for education. Using IV-probit models, we find causal evidence that more years of education lead to better health. One additional year of schooling is associated with 6.85 percentage points (pp) reduction in reporting poor health and 3.8 pp and 4.6 pp reduction in having self-reported difficulties with activities of daily living (ADLs) and instrumental ADLs, respectively. The marginal effect of education on the probability of having a chronic illness is a 4.4 pp reduction. This ranges from a reduction of 3.4 pp for heart disease to a 7 pp reduction for arthritis. The effects are larger than those from a probit model that does not control for the endogeneity of education. However, we do not find conclusive evidence that education reduces the risk of cancer, stroke and psychiatric illness.
Highlights
There is abundant evidence on the relationship between education and health.1 Many studies, whether country-specific (Etile 2014; Kim 2016) or international, have docu-For a review, see Grossman (2005).We thank Simon Lord for his excellent research assistance
This paper aims to estimate the causal effect of education on various health outcomes using cross-country variation in the timing of education reforms
We find that more years of education lead to a lower probability of self-reporting poor health (SRH) and self-reported difficulties with activities of daily living (ADLs) as well as instrumental ADLs (IADLs), and lower prevalence in chronic illness
Summary
There is abundant evidence on the relationship between education and health. Many studies, whether country-specific (Etile 2014; Kim 2016) or international, have docu-. An unobserved variable, like time preference, genetic factors or family background, could affect both education and health To solve this problem, we follow the line in the literature which has employed institutional changes as instruments for education, for instance, Lleras-Muney (2005), Cutler and Lleras-Muney (2006), Cutler and Lleras-Muney (2008), Clark and Royer (2013), Brunello et al (2016) and Galama et al (2018), among others.. We examine a wide range of health outcomes, from SRH to functional status and instrumental functional status, and a set of chronic conditions This differentiates our work from that of recent literature, for instance, Galama et al (2018), who focus mainly on mortality and its two most common preventable behavioral causes, smoking and obesity, or Gathmann et al (2015), who focuses on mortality, or even Crespo et al (2014), Brunello et al (2013) and Mazzonna (2014). This differentiates our work from that of Brunello et al (2016), who concentrate on self-reported health and health behaviors (smoking, drinking, exercising and the body mass index) for European countries
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