Causal Effects of Schooling on Adult and Child Health

说明(由申请人提供)：在大多数国家，学校教育直接或间接地通过各种途径与更好的健康相关行为和更好的健康/死亡结果呈正相关。但这些关联并不是通过多少学校教育能带来更好的健康相关行为和更好的健康/死亡结果来衡量的。学校教育可能在一定程度上代表了包括家庭背景和遗传在内的未被观察到的天赋，这些天赋对健康行为和健康/死亡结果具有因果影响。该项目的主要目标是使用来自丹麦和美国的中国双胞胎的五个数据集，调查受教育程度与健康和死亡率之间的因果关系(不包括捐赠)。尽管这些数据集之间的信息重叠很大，但每个数据集都有不同的优势。通过将它们放在一起研究，有望极大地提高对学校教育对健康相关行为和健康/死亡结果的因果影响的理解，扣除捐赠，不同出生队列中的女性和男性在不同的背景下。具体目标是：(1)调查自己的教育与自己和配偶的健康相关行为以及健康结果和儿童健康结果之间的简化关系。(2)调查学校教育影响自身和配偶健康相关行为、健康结果和儿童健康结果的间接途径--如既往健康相关行为、健康状况、婚姻状况。(3)调查教育投资在多大程度上对健康和与路径相关的其他捐赠做出反应。(4)调查上述估计数字在多大程度上的差异：(A)是否忽视或不完美地代表天赋，(B)男女之间，(C)出生队列之间，(D)对某些疾病有遗传易感性的个人，(E)由于非线性而不同的受教育程度，(F)如果考虑学校的特点，而不仅仅是学校的年级，(G)与健康有关的行为与健康结果，(H)身体和心理/心理健康，(I)不同的市场和政策背景。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Schooling is positively associated with better health-related behaviors and better health/mortality outcomes in most countries, both directly and indirectly through various pathways. But these associations do not measure by how much schooling causes better health-related behaviors and better health/mortality outcomes. Schooling may be proxying in part for unobserved endowments including family background and genetics that have causal effects on health behaviors and health/mortality outcomes. This project's principal goal is to investigate causal pathways linking schooling to health and mortality, net of endowments, using five data sets on twins from China, Denmark and the U.S. Though the information overlap across the data sets is large, each has different strengths. By examining them together there is the promise of a quantum increase in understanding of causal effects of schooling on health-related behaviors and health/mortality outcomes, net of endowments, for females and males in different birth cohorts in different contexts. Specific aims are: (1) To investigate reduced-form relations, net of endowments, between own schooling and own and spouse health-related behaviors and health outcomes and child health outcomes. (2) To investigate indirect pathways - such as prior health-related behaviors, health status, marital status -- through which schooling affects own and spouse health-related behaviors and health outcomes and child health outcomes. (3) To investigate to what extent schooling investments respond to health and other endowments associated with the pathways. (4) To investigate to what extent the estimates above differ (a) if endowments are ignored or represented imperfectly, (b) between females and males, (c) across birth cohorts, (d) for individuals with genetic predispositions towards certain diseases, (e) across schooling levels due to nonlinearities, (f) if characteristics of schools and not just grades of schooling are considered, (g) for health-related behaviors versus health outcomes, (h) for physical versus mental/psychological health, (i) for different market and policy contexts.