IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/diw/diwrup/113en.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does More Education Protect against Mental Health Problems?

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Graeber

Abstract

Mental health conditions are a leading cause of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and health costs worldwide: They account for 199 million DALYs or 37 percent of healthy life years lost from non-communicable diseases. The sum of direct and indirect costs worldwide were estimated to amount to 2.5 trillion US dollars in 2010 and projected to increase to 6 trillion US dollars in 2030 (Bloom et al., 2010). The heavy financial and societal burdens of mental health impairments also mean that prevention measures to alleviate these problems will have high financial and societal returns. Education has been theorized to be such a prevention measure. This DIW Roundup reviews contemporaneous research on the causal effect of education on mental health.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Graeber, 2017. "Does More Education Protect against Mental Health Problems?," DIW Roundup: Politik im Fokus 113, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwrup:113en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.565299.de/DIW_Roundup_113_en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Titus J Galama & Hans van Kippersluis, 2019. "A Theory of Socio-economic Disparities in Health over the Life Cycle," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(617), pages 338-374.
    2. repec:adr:anecst:y:2005:i:79-80:p:25 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Titus J. Galama & Hans van Kippersluis, 2010. "A Theory of Socioeconomic Disparities in Health over the Life Cycle," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 10-079/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Daniel A Kamhöfer & Hendrik Schmitz & Matthias Westphal, 2019. "Heterogeneity in Marginal Non-Monetary Returns to Higher Education," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 205-244.
    5. Chevalier, Arnaud & Feinstein, Leon, 2006. "Sheepskin or Prozac: The Causal Effect of Education on Mental Health," IZA Discussion Papers 2231, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Berkman, Lisa F. & Glass, Thomas & Brissette, Ian & Seeman, Teresa E., 2000. "From social integration to health: Durkheim in the new millennium," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 51(6), pages 843-857, September.
    7. Adriana Lleras-Muney & Frank R. Lichtenberg, 2010. "Are the More Educated More Likely to Use New Drugs?," NBER Chapters, in: Contributions in Memory of Zvi Griliches, pages 671-696, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Cutler, David M. & Lleras-Muney, Adriana, 2010. "Understanding differences in health behaviors by education," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 1-28, January.
    9. Crespo, Laura & López-Noval, Borja & Mira, Pedro, 2014. "Compulsory schooling, education, depression and memory: New evidence from SHARELIFE," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 36-46.
    10. James Banks & Fabrizio Mazzonna, 2012. "The Effect of Education on Old Age Cognitive Abilities: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(560), pages 418-448, May.
    11. Johansson, Edvard & Böckerman, Petri & Martelin, Tuija & Pirkola, Sami & Poikolainen, Karí, 2009. "Does Education Shield Against Common Mental Disorders?," Discussion Papers 1202, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dahmann, Sarah C. & Schnitzlein, Daniel D., 2019. "No evidence for a protective effect of education on mental health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    2. Titus J. Galama & Hans van Kippersluis, 2013. "Health Inequalities through the Lens of Health Capital Theory: Issues, Solutions, and Future Directions," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 13-076/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    3. Crespo, Laura & López-Noval, Borja & Mira, Pedro, 2014. "Compulsory schooling, education, depression and memory: New evidence from SHARELIFE," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 36-46.
    4. Dr Mohammad Rafiqul Islam & Dr Nicholas Sim, 2021. "Education and Food Consumption Patterns: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Indonesia," Papers 2109.08124, arXiv.org.
    5. Avendano, M.; de Coulon, A.; Nafilyan, V.;, 2017. "Does more education always improve mental health? Evidence from a British compulsory schooling reform," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 17/10, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    6. Oscar Erixson, 2017. "Health responses to a wealth shock: evidence from a Swedish tax reform," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(4), pages 1281-1336, October.
    7. Alexandrina Stoyanova & Jaime Pinilla, 2020. "The Evolution of Mental Health in the Context of Transitory Economic Changes," Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 203-221, April.
    8. Janke, Katharina & Johnston, David W. & Propper, Carol & Shields, Michael A., 2020. "The causal effect of education on chronic health conditions in the UK," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    9. Owen O'Donnell & Eddy Van Doorslaer & Tom Van Ourti, 2013. "Health and Inequality," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 13-170/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    10. van Kippersluis, Hans & Galama, Titus J., 2014. "Wealth and health behavior: Testing the concept of a health cost," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 197-220.
    11. Fjolla Kondirolli & Naveen Sunder, 2022. "Mental health effects of education," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(S2), pages 22-39, October.
    12. Ma, Mingming, 2019. "Does children's education matter for parents’ health and cognition? Evidence from China," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 222-240.
    13. Avendano, Mauricio & de Coulon, Augustin & Nafilyan, Vahé, 2020. "Does longer compulsory schooling affect mental health? Evidence from a British reform," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    14. James J. Heckman, 2012. "The developmental origins of health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(1), pages 24-29, January.
    15. Janke, Katharina & Johnston, David W. & Propper, Carol & Shields, Michael A., 2018. "The Causal Effect of Education on Chronic Health Conditions," IZA Discussion Papers 11353, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Beatrice Baaba Tawiah & Valentin Schiele, 2023. "Does Education Improve Cognitive Performance Four Decades After School Completion? A Replication Study of Nicole Schneeweis, Vegard Skirbekk and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer (Demography, 2014)," Working Papers Dissertations 102, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    17. Jeon, Sung-Hee & Pohl, R. Vincent, 2019. "Medical innovation, education, and labor market outcomes of cancer patients," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    18. Clémentine Garrouste & Mathilde Godard, 2016. "The lasting health impact of leaving school in a bad economy : Britons in the 1970s recession," Post-Print hal-01408637, HAL.
    19. Pedro Albarran Pérez & Marisa Hidalgo Hidalgo & Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe Kortajarene, 2017. "Schooling and adult health: Can education overcome bad early-life conditions?," Working Papers. Serie AD 2017-09, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    20. Vikesh Amin & Jere R. Behrman & Jason M. Fletcher & Carlos A. Flores & Alfonso Flores-Lagunes & Hans-Peter Kohler, 2022. "Does Schooling Improve Cognitive Abilities at Older Ages: Causal Evidence from Nonparametric Bounds," PIER Working Paper Archive 22-016, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:diw:diwrup:113en. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diwbede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.