Educational Attainment and Health: Evidence from a Sample of Older Adults

Abstract

This paper provides evidence of an education-health relationship among older adults, even after controlling for individual and family background characteristics. It also explores to what extent this relationship represents an independent effect of education on health. An identification strategy using the quarter of birth and a set of parental and sibling characteristics as instrumental variables for education is used to purge estimates of biases resulting from error components correlated with education. The results suggest that the previously observed correlation between educational attainment and adult health has a causal component.