Education and gender differences in mortality rates

Bellés-Obrero, Cristina; Jiménez-Martín, Sergi; Vall-Castelló, Judit

Education and gender differences in mortality rates

License

Citation

Bellés-Obrero, C, Jiménez-Martín, S, Vall-Castelló, J. Education and gender differences in mortality rates. 2019. handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10230/44696

This citation was generated automatically.

Abstract

We examine the gender asymmetries in the health benefits of acquiring further education at a time of increasing gender equality and women s greater access to economic opportunities. A labor market reform in Spain in 1980 raised the minimum legal working age from 14 to 16, while the school-leaving age remained at 14. We apply a difference-in-difference strategy to identify the reform s within-cohort effects, where treated and control individuals differ only in their month of birth. Although the reform improved the educational attainment of both women and men, the long-term effects over mortality differ by gender. We find that the reform decreased mortality at young ages (14-29) by 6.3% among men and by 8.9% among women. This was driven by a decrease (12.2% for men, 14.7% for women) in the probability of dying from external causes of death (accidents). However, we also find that the child labor reform increased mortality for prime-age women (30-45) by 6.3%. This effect is driven by increases in HIV mortality (11.6%), as well as by diseases of the nervous and circulatory system (8.7%). This pattern helps explain the narrowing age gap in life expectancy between women and men in Spain.