The Causal Effect of Education on Health: What is the Role of Health Behaviors?

TLDR

The study investigates the causal effect of education on health, separating the portion attributable to health behaviors by distinguishing short‑run (immediate past behaviors) from long‑run (entire behavioral history) mediation. Causal identification is achieved using instrumental variables based on compulsory schooling reforms and a combined aggregation‑differencing‑selection on observables approach to address endogeneity of education and behaviors. Panel data from European countries show that education protects men and women aged 50+ and that health behaviors explain about a quarter of the short‑run and a third of the long‑run effect of education on health. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

Abstract We investigate the causal effect of education on health and the part of it that is attributable to health behaviors by distinguishing between short‐run and long‐run mediating effects: whereas, in the former, only behaviors in the immediate past are taken into account, in the latter, we consider the entire history of behaviors. We use two identification strategies: instrumental variables based on compulsory schooling reforms and a combined aggregation, differencing, and selection on an observables technique to address the endogeneity of both education and behaviors in the health production function. Using panel data for European countries, we find that education has a protective effect for European men and women aged 50+. We find that the mediating effects of health behaviors—measured by smoking, drinking, exercising, and the body mass index—account in the short run for around a quarter and in the long run for around a third of the entire effect of education on health. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.