Rights statement: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Health Economics. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Health Economics, 70, 102252, 2020 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102252
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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - The causal effect of education on chronic health conditions in the UK
AU - Janke, Katharina
AU - Johnston, David W.
AU - Propper, Carol
AU - Shields, Michael
PY - 2020/3/1
Y1 - 2020/3/1
N2 - We study the causal impact of education on chronic health conditions by exploitng two UK education policy reforms. The first reform raised the minimum school leaving age in 1972 and affected the lower end of the educational attainment distribution. The second reform is a combination of several policy changes that affected the broader educational attainment distribution in the early 1990s. Results are consistent across both reforms: an extra year of schooling has no statistically identifiable impact on the prevalence of most chronic health conditions. The exception is that both reforms led to a statistically significant reduction in the probability of having diabetes, and this result is robust across model specifications. However, even with the largest survey samples available in the UK, we are unable to statistically rule out moderate size educational effects for many of the other health conditions, although we generally find considerably smaller effects than OLS associations suggest.
AB - We study the causal impact of education on chronic health conditions by exploitng two UK education policy reforms. The first reform raised the minimum school leaving age in 1972 and affected the lower end of the educational attainment distribution. The second reform is a combination of several policy changes that affected the broader educational attainment distribution in the early 1990s. Results are consistent across both reforms: an extra year of schooling has no statistically identifiable impact on the prevalence of most chronic health conditions. The exception is that both reforms led to a statistically significant reduction in the probability of having diabetes, and this result is robust across model specifications. However, even with the largest survey samples available in the UK, we are unable to statistically rule out moderate size educational effects for many of the other health conditions, although we generally find considerably smaller effects than OLS associations suggest.
KW - Education reform
KW - Chronic illness
KW - Causality
U2 - 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102252
DO - 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102252
M3 - Journal article
VL - 70
JO - Journal of Health Economics
JF - Journal of Health Economics
SN - 0167-6296
M1 - 102252
ER -