Compulsory Schooling Mitigates Health Inequality: Anthropometric Evidence from Two Centuries of Height Data

Although compulsory education (CE) laws have widened access to schooling and shaped economic, social, and health outcomes, it remains unclear whether they reduce long-run health inequalities. We study the effect of CE policies on health inequality using height Gini indices for 66 countries between 1810 and 2000, estimating intent-to-treat effects through a staggered difference-in-differences design. Our results indicate that CE exposure reduces the height Gini. The inequality-reducing effect appears to operate mainly through increased years of schooling and reduced fertility. The effect is not uniform across regions, being largest in Europe, and it is driven largely by later extensions of CE duration rather than initial adoption alone. Overall, the findings indicate that education policy can meaningfully narrow health disparities over time, but its effectiveness depends on the scale of the mandate and the timing of adoption.