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.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HD046144-02
Application #
6805536
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-SNEM-2 (50))
Program Officer
Meissner, Helen I
Project Start
2003-09-26
Project End
2006-07-31
Budget Start
2004-08-01
Budget End
2005-07-31
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2004
Total Cost
$286,582
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Pennsylvania
Department
Miscellaneous
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
042250712
City
Philadelphia
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
19104
Sudharsanan, Nikkil; Behrman, Jere R; Kohler, Hans-Peter (2016) Limited common origins of multiple adult health-related behaviors: Evidence from U.S. twins. Soc Sci Med 171:67-83
Behrman, Jere R; Xiong, Yanyan; Zhang, Junsen (2015) Cross-sectional schooling-health associations misrepresented causal schooling effects on adult health and health-related behaviors: evidence from the Chinese Adults Twins Survey. Soc Sci Med 127:190-7
Amin, Vikesh; Behrman, Jere R; Kohler, Hans-Peter (2015) Schooling has smaller or insignificant effects on adult health in the US than suggested by cross-sectional associations: new estimates using relatively large samples of identical twins. Soc Sci Med 127:181-9
Amin, Vikesh; Behrman, Jere R; Spector, Tim D (2013) Does More Schooling Improve Health Outcomes and Health Related Behaviors? Evidence from U.K. Twins. Econ Educ Rev 35:
Schnittker, Jason; Behrman, Jere R (2012) Learning to do well or learning to do good? Estimating the effects of schooling on civic engagement, social cohesion, and labor market outcomes in the presence of endowments. Soc Sci Res 41:306-20
Behrman, Jere R; Kohler, Hans-Peter; Jensen, Vibeke Myrup et al. (2011) Does more schooling reduce hospitalization and delay mortality? New evidence based on Danish twins. Demography 48:1347-75
Kohler, Hans-Peter; Behrman, Jere R; Schnittker, Jason (2011) Social science methods for twins data: integrating causality, endowments, and heritability. Biodemography Soc Biol 57:88-141
Li, Hongbin; Zhang, Junsen; Zhu, Yi (2008) The quantity-quality trade-off of children in a developing country: identification using Chinese twins. Demography 45:223-43
Schnittker, Jason (2008) Happiness and success: genes, families, and the psychological effects of socioeconomic position and social support. AJS 114 Suppl:S233-59