title: The Causal Effect of Education on Health: What is the Role of Health Behaviors?
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.
authors.affiliation: University of Padua, Padova, Italy.|CESifo, Munich, Germany.|Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany.|Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Giorgio
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Brunello
authors.affiliation: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany.|University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.|Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD), Torino, Italy.
authors.forename: Margherita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fort
authors.affiliation: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany.|University of Linz, Linz, Austria.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Schneeweis
authors.affiliation: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany.|University of Linz, Linz, Austria.|Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), London, UK.|Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS), Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Rudolf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Winter-Ebmer
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000453:epidemiology; D015992:Body Mass Index; D003657:Decision Making; D004522:Educational Status; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D015444:Exercise; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology; D064890:Social Determinants of Health; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology
keywords: I12; I21; JEL I1; SHARE; education; health; health behaviors