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Mortality Rates by College Degree Before and During COVID-19

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  • Anne Case
  • Angus Deaton

Abstract

It is now established that mortality and excess mortality from COVID-19 differed across racial and ethnic groups in 2020. Less is known about educational differences in mortality during the pandemic. We examine mortality rates by BA status within sex, age, and race/ethnic groups comparing 2020 with 2019. Mortality rates have increasingly differed by BA status in the US in recent years and there are good reasons to expect the gap to have widened further during the pandemic. Using publicly available provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics we find that mortality rates increased in 2020 over 2019 for those with and without a BA, irrespective of age, sex, or race/ethnicity. Although mortality rates increased by more for those without a BA, the ratio of mortality rates for those with and without a BA changed surprisingly little from 2019 to 2020. The BA was protective against mortality prior to the pandemic, and it was equally protective during the pandemic. Among 60 groups (sex by race/ethnicity by age) that are available in the data, the ratio of mortality rates of those without a BA to those with a BA fell for more than half of the groups. Our results suggest that differences in the risk of infection were less important in structuring mortality by education than differences in the risk of death conditional on infection.

Suggested Citation

  • Anne Case & Angus Deaton, 2021. "Mortality Rates by College Degree Before and During COVID-19," NBER Working Papers 29328, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29328
    Note: AG ED EH
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Theresa Andrasfay & Noreen Goldman, 2021. "Reductions in 2020 US life expectancy due to COVID-19 and the disproportionate impact on the Black and Latino populations," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118(5), pages 2014746118-, February.
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    5. Marcella Alsan & Amitabh Chandra & Kosali Simon, 2021. "The Great Unequalizer: Initial Health Effects of COVID-19 in the United States," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(3), pages 25-46, Summer.
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    Cited by:

    1. Amy Finkelstein & Geoffrey Kocks & Maria Polyakova & Victoria Udalova, 2022. "Heterogeneity in Damages from A Pandemic," NBER Working Papers 30658, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. John Komlos, 2022. "Running the U.S. Economy at Full Throttle Is a Stressful Variant of Capitalism," CESifo Working Paper Series 9966, CESifo.
    3. Adriana Lleras‐Muney, 2022. "Education and income gradients in longevity: The role of policy," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(1), pages 5-37, February.
    4. Angus Deaton, 2022. "The great divide: education, despair, and death," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 57(4), pages 161-168, October.
    5. Lisa Josefin Norrgren, 2023. "The highly educated live longer: The role of time preference, cognitive ability, and educational plans," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(8), pages 1767-1784, August.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

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