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Schooling, cognitive ability and health

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Author Info
M. Christopher Auld (University of Calgary, Canada)
Nirmal Sidhu (Health Quality Council, Saskatchewn, Canada)

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Abstract

A large literature documents a strong correlation between health and educational outcomes. In this paper we investigate the role of cognitive ability in the health-education nexus. Using NLSY data, we show that one standard deviation increase in cognitive ability is associated with roughly the same increase in health as two years of schooling and that cognitive ability accounts for roughly one quarter of the association between schooling and health. Both schooling and ability are strongly associated with health at low levels but less related or unrelated at high levels. Estimates treating schooling as endogenous to health suggest that much of the correlation between schooling and health is attributable to unobserved heterogeneity; the causal effect of schooling on health is large only for respondents with low levels of schooling and low cognitive ability. An implication is that policies which increase schooling will only increase health to the extent that they increase the education of poorly-educated individuals. Subsidies to college education, for example, are unlikely to increase population health. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/hec.1050
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Publisher Info
Article provided by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. in its journal Health Economics.

Volume (Year): 14 (2005)
Issue (Month): 10 ()
Pages: 1019-1034
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Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:14:y:2005:i:10:p:1019-1034

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Web page: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5749

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Hansen, Karsten T. & Heckman, James J. & Mullen, Kathleen J., 2003. "The Effect of Schooling and Ability on Achievement Test Scores," IZA Discussion Papers 826, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
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  2. McKinley L. Blackburn & David Neumark, 1993. "Are OLS Estimates of the Return to Schooling Biased Downward? Another Look," NBER Working Papers 4259, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 1997. "On two stage least squares estimation of the average treatment effect in a random coefficient model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 129-133, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Grossman, Michael, 1972. "On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(2), pages 223-55, March-Apr. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Angus Deaton & Christina Paxson, 1999. "Mortality, Education, Income, and Inequality among American Cohorts," NBER Working Papers 7140, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Edward C. Norton & Hua Wang & Chunrong Ai, 2004. "Computing interaction effects and standard errors in logit and probit models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 4(2), pages 154-167, June. [Downloadable!]
  7. Arendt, Jacob Nielsen, 2005. "Does education cause better health? A panel data analysis using school reforms for identification," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 149-160, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-75, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Michael Baker & Mark Stabile & Catherine Deri, 2001. "What do Self-Reported, Objective, Measures of Health Measure?," NBER Working Papers 8419, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Dana Goldman & Darius Lakdawalla, 2001. "Understanding Health Disparities Across Education Groups," NBER Working Papers 8328, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Lance Lochner & Enrico Moretti, 2004. "The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 155-189, March. [Downloadable!]
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  12. Kenkel, Donald S, 1991. "Health Behavior, Health Knowledge, and Schooling," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 287-305, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. James Heckman & Edward Vytlacil, 2001. "Identifying The Role Of Cognitive Ability In Explaining The Level Of And Change In The Return To Schooling," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(1), pages 1-12, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Case, Anne & Fertig, Angela & Paxson, Christina, 2005. "The lasting impact of childhood health and circumstance," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 365-389, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Newey, Whitney K., 1987. "Efficient estimation of limited dependent variable models with endogenous explanatory variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 231-250, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Adriana Lleras-Muney & Frank R. Lichtenberg, 2002. "The Effect of Education on Medical Technology Adoption: Are the More Educated More Likely to Use New Drugs," NBER Working Papers 9185, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Victor R. Fuchs, 1982. "Time Preference and Health: An Exploratory Study," NBER Working Papers 0539, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. Garen, John, 1984. "The Returns to Schooling: A Selectivity Bias Approach with a Continuous Choice Variable," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(5), pages 1199-1218, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. John Cawley & James Heckman & Edward Vytlacil, 1998. "Understanding the Role of Cognitive Ability in Accounting for the Recent Rise in the Economic Return to Education," NBER Working Papers 6388, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Ai, Chunrong & Norton, Edward C., 2003. "Interaction terms in logit and probit models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 123-129, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  21. Michael Grossman, 1973. "The Correlation Between Health and Schooling," NBER Working Papers 0022, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Donald S. Kenkel & Dean R. Lillard & Alan D. Mathios, 2006. "The Roles of High School Completion and GED Receipt in Smoking and Obesity," NBER Working Papers 11990, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  23. Hartog, Joop & Oosterbeek, Hessel, 1998. "Health, wealth and happiness: why pursue a higher education?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 245-256, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Nilsson, William, 2006. "Socioeconomic Status and Sickness Absence - What do twins tell us about causality?," UmeÃ¥ Economic Studies 670, Umeå University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  2. Flavio Cunha & James J. Heckman, 2009. "The Economics and Psychology of Inequality and Human Development," NBER Working Papers 14695, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. James J. Heckman, 2008. "Schools, Skills, and Synapses," NBER Working Papers 14064, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. Andrew M. Jones & Stefanie Schurer, 2007. "How does heterogeneity shape the socioeconomic gradient in health satisfaction?," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 07/05, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. James J. Heckman, 2007. "The Economics, Technology and Neuroscience of Human Capability Formation," IZA Discussion Papers 2875, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Hans van Kippersluis & Owen O'Donnell & Eddy van Doorslaer, . "Long Run Returns to Education: Does Schooling Lead to an Extended Old Age?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 09-037/3, Tinbergen Institute. [Downloadable!]
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