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The Health Returns to Education - What Can We Learn from Twins?

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Author Info
Petter Lundborg () (Free University Amsterdam)
Abstract

This paper estimates the health returns to education, using data on identical twins. I adopt a twin-differences strategy in order to obtain estimates that are not biased by unobserved family background and genetic traits that may affect both education and health. I further investigate to what extent within-twin-pair differences in schooling correlates with within-twin-pair differences in early life health and parent-child relations. The results suggest a causal effect of education on health. Higher educational levels are found to be positively related to self-reported health but negatively related to the number of chronic conditions. Lifestyle factors, such as smoking and overweight, are found to contribute little to the education/health gradient. I am also able to rule out occupational hazards and health insurance coverage as explanations for the gradient. In addition, I find no evidence of heterogenous effects of education by parental education. Finally! , the results suggest that factors that may vary within twin pairs, such as birth weight, early life health, parental treatment and relation with parents, do not predict within-twin pair differences in schooling, lending additional credibility to my estimates and to the general vailidy of using a twin-differences design to study the returns to education.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Tinbergen Institute in its series Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers with number 08-027/3.

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Date of creation: 2008
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Handle: RePEc:dgr:uvatin:20080027

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Web page: http://www.tinbergen.nl/

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Related research
Keywords: health production education schooling twins siblings returns to education ability bias

Find related papers by JEL classification:
I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production
I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped
J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
C41 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Duration Analysis

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This page was last updated on 2008-5-8.


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