There is a large body of work that documents a strong, positive correlation between education and measures of health, but little is known about the mechanisms by which education might affect health. One possibility is that more educated individuals are more likely to adopt new medical technologies. We investigate this theory by asking whether more educated people are more likely to use newer drugs, while controlling for other individual characteristics, such as income and insurance status. Using the 1997 MEPS, we find that more highly educated people are more likely to use drugs more recently approved by the FDA. We find that education only matters for individuals who repeatedly purchase drugs for a given condition, suggesting that the more educated are better able to learn from experience.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
9185.
Length: Date of creation: Sep 2002 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9185
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Find related papers by JEL classification: I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
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