The effect of education on adult mortality, health, and income: triangulating across genetic and policy reforms

Abstract

1AbstractOn average, educated people are healthier, wealthier and have higher life expectancy than those with less education. Numerous studies have attempted to determine whether these differences are caused by education, or are merely correlated with it and are ultimately caused by another factor. Previous studies have used a range of natural experiments to provide causal evidence. Here we exploit two natural experiments, perturbation of germline genetic variation associated with education which occurs at conception, known as Mendelian randomization, and a policy reform, the raising of the school leaving age in the UK in 1972. Previous studies have suggested that the differences in outcomes associated with education may be due to confounding. However, the two independent sources of variation we exploit largely imply consistent causal effects of education on outcomes much later in life.

Longer schooling but not better off? A quasi-experimental study of the effect of compulsory schooling on biomarkers in France

“…Compulsory schooling laws were introduced in many European countries and the United States during the 20 th Century (Brunello, Fort, & Weber, 2009). An extensive literature in economics and public health has used these reforms to examine the causal effect of schooling duration on a range of adult specific diseases and risk factors (Banks & Mazzona, 2012;Davies, Dickson, Davey Smith, van den Berg, & Windmeijer, 2018;Dursun & Cesur, 2016;Glymour, Kawachi, Jencks, & Berkman, 2008;Huang, 2015;Nafilyan, Avendano, & De Coulon, 2017;Nguyen et al, 2016;Schneeweis, Skirbekk, & Winter-Ebmer, 2014), health behaviors (Jurges, Reinhold, & Salm, 2011;Silles, 2015), health-related knowledge (Johnston, Lordan, Shields, & Suziedelyte, 2015), and mortality (Albouy & Lequien, 2009;Clark & Royer, 2013;Gathmann, Jurges, & Reinhold, 2015;Lager & Torssander, 2012;Lleras-Muney, 2005). However, a recent review and metaanalysis of the health effects of compulsory schooling laws identified a paucity of research on biomarkers of health (Hamad, Elser, Tran, Rehkopf, & Goodman, 2018).…”

Evaluating the potential role of pleiotropy in Mendelian randomization studies

“…Individual level data are valuable because it can be used to perform some sensitivity analyses that cannot be done with summary data, e.g. the use of interactions ( 87 , 90 , 91 ), and triangulating MR estimates with alternative causal inference strategies ( 16 , 18 , 103 ). Other advantages of using individual level data from the same sample are that causal estimates are robust to misspecification of the SNP-exposure association model, and when LD patterns are needed an external reference panel can be avoided.…”

Sleep time, social jetlag and intelligence: biology or work timing?

“…Future studies using Mendelian Randomization (MR) on genetic data may test this hypothesis, which would be supported by a unidirectional causal path from IQ-related genetic variants to sleep timing. We are aware of one such study 23 , which found minimal causal influence of education on chronotype using an education polygenic score which is also associated with intelligence 24 .…”