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. 2009 Apr 1:4:1-33.

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

Hans van Kippersluis  1 , Owen O'Donnell, Eddy van Doorslaer
Affiliations

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

Hans van Kippersluis et al. J Hum Resour. .

Abstract

While there is no doubt that health is strongly correlated with education, whether schooling exerts a causal impact on health is not firmly established. We exploit a Dutch compulsory schooling law 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 significant and robust negative effect on mortality. For men surviving to age 81, an extra year of schooling is estimated to reduce the probability of dying before the age of 89 by almost 3 percentage points relative to a baseline of 50 percent.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) Years of education by cohort. 1912–1922 birth-year cohorts, males, (B) Years of education by cohort. 1912–1922 birth-year cohorts, females. Data are from the 1997–2005 POLS. Fitted line is from a quadratic in cohort with the trend allowed to differ on either side of the reform threshold (as in the right-hand column of Table 2 – lowest AIC value).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Years of education by month-of-birth. Last six months of 1916 and first six months of 1917, males.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Proportion of the pooled 1997–2005 POLS sample that died before the end of 2005, by cohort. Fitted line is from a quadratic in cohort with the trend allowed to differ on either side of the reform threshold (as in the third column of Table 3 – lowest AIC value). Cohorts 1912–1922, males.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Eight-year mortality rate - proportion of the 1998 RIO sample that died before then end of 2005, by cohort. Fitted line is from a linear in cohort with the trend allowed to differ on either side of the reform threshold (as in the fourth column of Table 3 – lowest AIC value). Cohorts 1912–1922, males.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Proportion finishing high school by cohort. Data are from the 1997–2005 POLS. Fitted line is from a quadratic in cohort with the trend allowed to differ on either side of the reform threshold. Cohorts 1912–1922, males.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Eight-year mortality rate - proportion of the 1998 RIO sample that died in the period 1998–2005, by cohort. Fitted line is from a linear in cohort with the trend allowed to differ on either side of the reform threshold. Cohorts 1912–1922, females.
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References

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