Causal Effects of Schooling on Adult and Child Health

描述（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/死亡率结果呈正相关。但这些关联并没有通过学校教育在多大程度上促进了与健康相关的行为和更好的健康/死亡率结果来衡量。学校教育可能在一定程度上代表了未观察到的禀赋，包括家庭背景和基因，这些因素对健康行为和健康/死亡率结果有因果影响。该项目的主要目标是调查教育与健康和死亡率之间的因果关系，使用来自中国、丹麦和美国的五组双胞胎数据集。尽管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。通过对这些因素进行综合研究，我们有望大大提高对学校教育对健康相关行为和健康/死亡率结果的因果影响的理解，对不同背景下不同出生群体的女性和男性而言，不考虑禀赋。具体目标是：(1)调查自身教育与自身和配偶健康相关行为、健康结果和儿童健康结果之间的简化关系，即捐赠净值。(2)研究学校教育影响自身和配偶健康行为、健康结果和儿童健康结果的间接途径，如既往健康行为、健康状况、婚姻状况。(3)调查教育投资在多大程度上响应与路径相关的健康和其他禀赋。(4)调查(a)如果禀赋被忽略或表现不完美，(b)在女性和男性之间，(c)在出生队列之间，(d)在具有某些疾病遗传倾向的个人之间，(e)由于非线性而在学校教育水平之间，(f)如果考虑学校特征而不仅仅是学校成绩，(g)健康相关行为与健康结果，(h)身体健康与精神/心理健康，(i)针对不同的市场和政策环境。

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.