American Economic Journal:
Applied Economics
ISSN 1945-7782 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7790 (Online)
Education and Mortality: Evidence from a Social Experiment
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
vol. 10,
no. 2, April 2018
(pp. 234–56)
Abstract
We examine the effects on mortality and health due to a major Swedish educational reform that increased the years of compulsory schooling. Using the gradual phase-in of the reform between 1949 and 1962 across municipalities, we estimate insignificant effects of the reform on mortality in the affected cohort. From the confidence intervals, we can rule out effects larger than 1–1.4 months of increased life expectancy. We find no significant impacts on mortality for individuals of low socioeconomic status backgrounds, on deaths that are more likely to be affected by behavior, on hospitalizations, and consumption of prescribed drugs.Citation
Meghir, Costas, Mårten Palme, and Emilia Simeonova. 2018. "Education and Mortality: Evidence from a Social Experiment." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 10 (2): 234–56. DOI: 10.1257/app.20150365Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- H52 National Government Expenditures and Education
- I12 Health Behavior
- I21 Analysis of Education
- I28 Education: Government Policy