title: The effect of college education on mortality.
abstract: We exploit exogenous variation in years of completed college induced by draft-avoidance behavior during the Vietnam War to examine the impact of college on adult mortality. Our estimates imply that increasing college attainment from the level of the state at the 25th percentile of the education distribution to that of the state at the 75th percentile would decrease cumulative mortality for cohorts in our sample by 8 to 10 percent relative to the mean. Most of the reduction in mortality is from deaths due to cancer and heart disease. We also explore potential mechanisms, including differential earnings and health insurance.
authors.affiliation: University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA; National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, USA; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Kasey
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Buckles
authors.affiliation: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hagemann
authors.affiliation: National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, USA; University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Ofer
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Malamud
authors.affiliation: North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Melinda
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Morrill
authors.affiliation: University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA; National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, USA; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany. Electronic address: a_wozniak@nd.edu.
authors.forename: Abigail
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wozniak
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006331:Heart Diseases / Q000401:mortality; D006801:Humans; D008017:Life Expectancy; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009026:Mortality; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality
keywords: College; Education; Instrumental variables; Mortality; Vietnam draft