2009-04-01
Long Run Returns to Education: Does Schooling Lead to an Extended Old Age?
Publication
Publication
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.
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Tinbergen Institute | |
hdl.handle.net/1765/16297 | |
Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper Series | |
Discussion paper / Tinbergen Institute | |
Organisation | Tinbergen Institute |
van Kippersluis, H., O'Donnell, O., & van Doorslaer, E. (2009). Long Run Returns to Education: Does Schooling Lead to an Extended Old Age? (No. TI-2009-037/3). Discussion paper / Tinbergen Institute. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/16297 |