RUI: Race, Gender, and the Correlation Between Schooling and Health

健康经济学家普遍认为，在样本和时间上，受教育年限与健康之间存在持久的实证关联。然而，关于这种关联发生的原因有几种解释。一种解释是，学校教育的直接影响是赋予人们更多的知识和技能来实践预防医学或更广泛地使用医疗保健。另一个原因是，学校教育通过提供安全的工作、不鼓励吸烟和鼓励使用安全带和锻炼来促进健康。另一些人指出，儿童或青少年时期健康状况不佳可能导致对学校教育的投资减少。最后，有人建议，诸如时间折现率等未观察到的变量是高水平学校教育和良好健康的“真正”原因，增加学校教育并不会导致更好的健康或减缓现有健康状况的恶化。该项目将开发模型，除了比较不同性别和种族的上学健康回报率外，还可以检验许多这些假设。该项目使用了四个大型国家数据集：国家健康和营养检查调查（NHANESI）第一和第二、国家健康和营养检查调查的流行病学后续调查以及收入动态小组研究。将使用与健康有关的几个因变量：血压、吸烟、体重和早期死亡。评估技术将在适当的地方考虑到自我选择模型。这项研究将首次关注种族和性别差异在学校教育与健康之间的相关性，就像经典研究关注性别和种族差异在学校教育的经济回报方面一样。

There is widespread agreement among health economists that there is a persistent empirical association across samples and over time between years of schooling and health. However, there are several explanations about why this association occurs. One explanation is that there is a direct effect with schooling endowing people with greater knowledge and skills to practice preventive medicine or use medical care more widely. Another is that schooling enhances health through allowing access to safe jobs, discouraging smoking and encouraging seat belt use and exercise. Others point to the possibility that poor health in childhood or adolescence results in less investment in schooling. Finally, it is suggested that unobserved variables such as the rate of time discount is the "true" cause of both high levels of schooling and good health and that increased schooling does not lead to better health or slower deterioration of existing health. This project will develop models which will allow for testing of many of these hypotheses in addition to comparing rates of health returns to schooling across gender and race. Four large national data sets are used in the project: National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANESI) I and II, Epidemiological Followup Survey to NHANESI, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Several dependent variables relating to health will be used: blood pressures, smoking, body mass and early death. The estimation techniques will take into account self selection models, where appropriate. This study will be the first to focus on the race and gender differences in the correlations between schooling and health in the same way that the classic studies focused on the gender and race differences in the financial returns to schooling.