The Causal Effect of Education on Cancer Risk and Survival in England and Wales

A growing number of people are diagnosed with cancer over time. A better understanding of educational inequalities in cancer is becoming increasingly important. However, only a few studies have focused the attention on the causal effect of education on cancer risk and mortality. This quasi-experimental design exploits the exogenous variation in compulsory schooling due to policy changes in 1947 and 1972 in England and Wales using data from the ONS Longitudinal Study (ONS LS). These educational reforms affected a large proportion of the population. The identification of the causal effect of education on cancer risk and survival is achieved using the regression discontinuity framework with categorical outcomes. Therefore, this work aims at studying the effect of education on the probability of developing, surviving and dying from cancer. Results show that the 1947 and 1972 educational reforms do not seem to be causally related to cancer incidence and mortality. This study suggests the absence of a causal role of one additional year of compulsory schooling on cancer outcomes. Among the reasons for the absence of causal evidence there are the heterogeneity by cancer site as well as the local effect of the compulsory school reforms.