Education and Health Over the Life Cycle

Abstract

Cuiping Schiman was supported during this project by a NHLBI grant (R01-60036640) awarded to Dr. Norrina Allen. Sponsors did not participate in the design or conduct of the study, or in the collection, analyses, and interpretation of the data, or in the preparation and review of the manuscript. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.At least one co-author has disclosed a financial relationship of potential relevance for this research. Further information is available online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w26836.ack NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Age, Education and Consumption of Medical Care: Evidence From Malaysia

“…22 The effect of educational level on the consumption of medical care across age has not been studied thoroughly. A somewhat similar study has been conducted by Kaestner et al 25 , who examined health, instead of the medical care consumption. The authors extended the theory of Grossman 1 and found that the effect of educational level on health was not constant over lifecycle.…”

“…Educational level improves the output of consuming medical care more than the output of exercise or a healthy diet, thus the effect of educational level on the consumption of medical care varies across age. 25 The fact of the matter is that older individuals tend to consume medical care, while younger individuals are likely to engage in exercise or adopt a healthy diet. Therefore, the marginal effect of educational level on the consumption of medical care may be small when individuals are young, but it may become large when individuals are old.…”

Mortality among male cigar and cigarette smokers in the USA

“…A recent study using the NHIS surveys linked to the National Death Index suggested that education has an inverse effect on mortality, but only after middle age, around 55 years [16]. Similarly, there is evidence in the literature, suggesting that mortality differs by level of income [11,17].…”

Human-Capital Formation: The Importance of Endogenous Longevity

“…Likewise, and despite a very strong association between them, whether education causes health and longevity is widely debated. An effect of education on health exists in some contexts but not in others and seems to depend on age, gender, the returns to education, and the quality and type of education (Lochner, 2011;Galama et al, 2018;Kaestner et al, 2020). Finally, an essential feature of human capital is that "skills beget skills" through self-productivity and dynamic complementarity (e.g., Cunha and Heckman, 2007a), but the extent to which these mechanisms operate appears to be context-specific (e.g., Almond and Mazumder, 2013;Malamud et al, 2016;Rossin-Slater and Wüst, 2016;Almond et al, 2018).…”

“…affect skill formation (e.g., Akee et al, 2010;Currie and Almond, 2011;Dahl and Lochner, 2012;Almond et al, 2018), that education affects health at least in certain contexts (e.g., Galama et al, 2018;Heckman et al, 2018;Kaestner et al, 2020), and that skill and health are essential to human-capital based economic development (e.g., Lucas, 1989;Arora, 2001;Barro, 2001;Weil, 2007). Moreover, skill formation is generally believed to exhibit self-productivity and dynamic complementarity, processes that are considered fundamental to explaining why, particularly early in life, skill begets skill (Cunha and Heckman, 2007a).…”