IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/esr/wpaper/wp429.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Long Term Health Effects of Education

Author

Listed:
  • O'Sullivan, Vincent

Abstract

Using data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, I find that exogenous changes in the schooling of men born into lower social class families in Ireland during the late 1940s and 1950s had a statistically significant positive effect on their self-reported health in later life. I also find that the increased level of schooling had a statistically significant positive effect on physical exercise in later life as well as reducing the probability of an individual experiencing certain non-cardiovascular chronic conditions. However no statistically significant effect was found in relation to cardiovascular disease, self-rated mental health, smoking behaviour or self-reported and objectively measured memory although there is a high degree of imprecision in these estimates.

Suggested Citation

  • O'Sullivan, Vincent, 2012. "The Long Term Health Effects of Education," Papers WP429, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
  • Handle: RePEc:esr:wpaper:wp429
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.esri.ie/pubs/WP429.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arie Kapteyn & James P. Smith & Arthur van Soest, 2007. "Vignettes and Self-Reports of Work Disability in the United States and the Netherlands," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 461-473, March.
    2. Victor R. Fuchs, 1982. "Economic Aspects of Health," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number fuch82-1, July.
    3. Robert T. Michael, 1972. "The Effect of Education on Efficiency in Consumption," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number mich72-1, July.
    4. Gary S. Becker & Casey B. Mulligan, 1997. "The Endogenous Determination of Time Preference," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 729-758.
    5. Robert T. Michael, 1972. "Introduction to "The Effect of Education on Efficiency in Consumption"," NBER Chapters, in: The Effect of Education on Efficiency in Consumption, pages 3-6, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Hendrik Jürges & Eberhard Kruk & Steffen Reinhold, 2013. "The effect of compulsory schooling on health—evidence from biomarkers," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(2), pages 645-672, April.
    7. Kenkel, Donald S, 1991. "Health Behavior, Health Knowledge, and Schooling," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 287-305, April.
    8. Grossman, Michael, 2006. "Education and Nonmarket Outcomes," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 10, pages 577-633, Elsevier.
    9. Grossman, Michael, 1972. "On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(2), pages 223-255, March-Apr.
    10. Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2005. "The Relationship Between Education and Adult Mortality in the United States," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(1), pages 189-221.
    11. 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.
    12. John Bound, 1991. "Self-Reported Versus Objective Measures of Health in Retirement Models," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 26(1), pages 106-138.
    13. Kemptner, Daniel & Jürges, Hendrik & Reinhold, Steffen, 2011. "Changes in compulsory schooling and the causal effect of education on health: Evidence from Germany," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 340-354, March.
    14. Fuchs, Victor R. (ed.), 1982. "Economic Aspects of Health," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226267852, December.
    15. Damon Clark & Heather Royer, 2010. "The Effect of Education on Adult Health and Mortality: Evidence from Britain," NBER Working Papers 16013, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ma, Yuanyuan & Nolan, Anne & Smith, James P., 2018. "The value of education to health: Evidence from Ireland," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 14-25.

    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. Gathmann, Christina & Jürges, Hendrik & Reinhold, Steffen, 2015. "Compulsory schooling reforms, education and mortality in twentieth century Europe," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 74-82.
    2. Jiang, Wei & Lu, Yi & Xie, Huihua, 2020. "Education and mental health: Evidence and mechanisms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 407-437.
    3. Kemptner, Daniel & Jürges, Hendrik & Reinhold, Steffen, 2011. "Changes in compulsory schooling and the causal effect of education on health: Evidence from Germany," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 340-354, March.
    4. Bautista, María Angélica & González, Felipe & Martinez, Luis R. & Muñoz, Pablo & Prem, Mounu, 2020. "Does Higher Education Reduce Mortality? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Chile," SocArXiv 5s2px, Center for Open Science.
    5. Massimiliano Bratti & Alfonso Miranda, 2010. "Non‐pecuniary returns to higher education: the effect on smoking intensity in the UK," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(8), pages 906-920, August.
    6. Tatjana Begerow & Hendrik Jürges, 2022. "Does compulsory schooling affect health? Evidence from ambulatory claims data," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 23(6), pages 953-968, August.
    7. Anderberg, Dan & Chevalier, Arnaud & Wadsworth, Jonathan, 2011. "Anatomy of a health scare: Education, income and the MMR controversy in the UK," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 515-530, May.
    8. Jürges Hendrik & Meyer Sophie-Charlotte, 2020. "Educational Differences in Smoking: Selection Versus Causation," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 240(4), pages 467-492, August.
    9. Hendrik Jürges & Eberhard Kruk & Steffen Reinhold, 2013. "The effect of compulsory schooling on health—evidence from biomarkers," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(2), pages 645-672, April.
    10. Grossman, Michael, 2006. "Education and Nonmarket Outcomes," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 10, pages 577-633, Elsevier.
    11. Weidong Wang & Yongqing Dong & Xiaohong Liu & Linxiu Zhang & Yunli Bai & Spencer Hagist, 2018. "The More Educated, the Healthier: Evidence from Rural China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-14, December.
    12. Tansel, Aysit & Keskin, Halil Ibrahim, 2017. "Education Effects on Days Hospitalized and Days out of Work by Gender: Evidence from Turkey," IZA Discussion Papers 11210, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Raquel Fonseca Benito & Yuhui Zheng, 2011. "The Effect of Education on Health Cross-Country Evidence," Working Papers WR-864, RAND Corporation.
    14. Ji, Sisi & Zhu, Zheyi, 2022. "Does higher education matter for health?," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2022/4, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    15. 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.
    16. Baltagi, Badi H. & Flores-Lagunes, Alfonso & Karatas, Haci M., 2019. "The effect of education on health: Evidence from the 1997 compulsory schooling reform in Turkey," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 205-221.
    17. Petter Lundborg, 0000. "The Health Returns to Education - What can we learn from Twins?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-027/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    18. Jared C. Carbone & Snorre Kverndokk, 2016. "Individual Investments in Education and Health: Policy Responses and Interactions," CESifo Working Paper Series 6154, CESifo.
    19. Kim, Younoh & Radoias, Vlad, 2016. "Education, individual time preferences, and asymptomatic disease detection," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 15-22.
    20. Carbone, Jared C. & Kverndokk, Snorre, 2014. "Individual investments in education and health," HERO Online Working Paper Series 2014:1, University of Oslo, Health Economics Research Programme.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    education/data/Social class/Ireland;

    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:esr:wpaper:wp429. 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: Sarah Burns (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esriiie.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.