reprint of marriage and health selection protection and assortative mating abstract using data from the panel study of income dynamics psid and the medical expenditure panel survey meps we analyze the health gap between married and unmarried individuals of working age controlling for observables we find a gap that peaks at 10 points at ages 55 59 years the marriage health gap is similar for men and women if we allow for unobserved heterogeneity in innate health permanent and age dependent potentially correlated with timing and likelihood of marriage we find that the effect of marriage on health disappears below age 40 years while about 5 points difference between married and unmarried individuals remains at older ages 55 59 years this indicates that the observed gap is mainly driven by selection into marriage at younger ages but there might be a protective effect of marriage at older ages exploring the mechanisms behind this result we find that better innate health is associated with a higher probability of marriage and a lower probability of divorce and there is strong assortative mating among couples by innate health we also find that married individuals are more likely to have a healthier behavior compared to unmarried ones finally we find that health insurance is critical for the beneficial effect of marriage

health behavior health knowledge and schooling the positive correlation between schooling and good health is well documented one explanation is that schooling helps people choose healthier life styles by improving their knowledge of the relationship between health behaviors and health outcomes that is schooling improves the household s allocative efficiency in producing health this empirical study uses direct measures of health knowledge to test this explanation part of the relationship between schooling and the consumption of cigarettes alcohol and exercise is explained by differences in health knowledge however most of schooling s effects on health behavior remain after differences in knowledge are controlled for

intensive and extensive margins of fertility capital accumulation and economic welfare abstract this paper investigates the impact of low fertility on long term capital accumulation and economic welfare we find that the impact differs depending on whether the low fertility arises from a decrease in the fertility of mothers the intensive margin of fertility or the motherhood rate the extensive margin of fertility we show that an increase in the fertility of mothers decreases the capital stock and economic welfare conversely we identify a u shaped relationship between the extensive margin of fertility and the capital stock because of the existence of two opposing effects such that the decline in fertility may reduce economic welfare furthermore we show that an intragenerational income redistribution policy can eliminate the welfare loss resulting from the incomplete market

the political economy of u s wheat legislation bruce a babcock colin a carter and andrew schmitz both taxpayer subsidies to u s wheat producers and domestic deadweight losses increased as a result of the u s wheat program adopted in 1985 a calculation of the costs and benefits of alternative wheat policies shows that mandatory production controls with no taxpayer expense could have made wheat producers as well off as the adopted policy becker s theory of competition among interest groups and peltzman s theory of the equilibrium amount of regulation are shown to be consistent with the observed policy choice if the list of affected interest groups includes agricultural input suppliers and grain marketing firms i introduction every five years congress drafts new farm legislation dictating the provisions of commodity programs for cotton and the major food and feed grains for the subsequent five years from 1973 through 1985 the primary features of the commodity programs were guaranteed farm prices and government stockholding activities deadweight losses from the programs during this time were minimal market prices were generally higher than the government defended price floors because of a booming export market legislated increases in commodity support prices combined with a severe drop off in the demand for agricultural exports beginning in 1982 increased the economic costs of the commodity programs the u s price floor became the world price for wheat cotton and corn grain stocks accumulated while government payments to u s farmers grew to unprecedented levels most agricultural interest groups in 1984 agreed that an overhaul of agricultural policy was necessary supporters of large levels of production and exports wanted to stimulate the demand for exports by eliminating price floors others felt that the united states should reduce budgetary costs by using direct supply controls to raise farm prices the clear winners in the new 1985 farm bill were the proponents of maintained production levels and expanded exports the new policy froze the relatively high supply prices received by farmers while simultaneously lowering price floors becker 1983 argues that two forces mainly determine the outcome of policy debates the first following stigler 1971 and peltzman 1976 is the relative efficiency with which interest groups exert political pressure interest groups that are efficient in exerting political pressure can increase the subsidization or decrease the tax burden of their constituents the second force is the extent of deadweight losses associated with proposed policies those policies with lower deadweight losses are ceteris paribus more likely to be adopted for the simple reason that less tax needs to be collected from losing interest groups for given transfers to winning groups gardner 1987 finds empirical evidence that both the ability to redistribute efficiently and the effectiveness of political organizations help explain which farm commodities have received the most government support since 1930 his study provides little insight however into which force is more important in determining the type of redistribution policies that are ultimately adopted for a given commodity an examination of the wheat program adopted in the 1985 farm bill and alternative policies that were rejected provides an opportunity to determine whether the efficiency of programs or the political prowess of interest groups is more important in determining policy outcomes this task requires a calculation of the magnitudes and the distribution of costs and benefits of the chosen policy and alternative policies costs and benefits are calculated for 1 a continuation of the 1981 farm bill policies through 1986 1990 2 the adopted 1985 farm bill policies and 3 mandatory production controls all three alternatives are examined relative to a laissez faire policy whereby the u s government has no direct involvement in agriculture

rising mortality and life expectancy differentials by lifetime earnings in the united states are mortality and life expectancy differences by socioeconomic groups increasing in the united states using a unique data set matching administrative and survey data this study explores trends in these differentials by lifetime earnings for the 1983 2003 period results indicate a consistent increase in mortality differentials across sex and age groups the study also finds a substantial increase in life expectancy differentials by lifetime earnings the top to bottom quintile premium increased 30 percent for men and almost doubled for women these results complement recent research to point to almost five decades of increasing differential mortality in the united states

the relationship between education and adult mortality in the united states prior research has uncovered a large and positive correlation between education and health this paper examines whether education has a causal impact on health i follow synthetic cohorts using successive u s censuses to estimate the impact of educational attainment on mortality rates i use compulsory education laws from 1915 to 1939 as instruments for education the results suggest that education has a causal impact on mortality and that this effect is perhaps larger than has been previously estimated in the literature copyright 2005 wiley blackwell

does education improve citizenship evidence from the united states and the united kingdom abstract many studies document an association between schooling and civic participation but none credibly investigate causal links we explore the effect of extra schooling induced through compulsory schooling laws on the likelihood of becoming politically involved in the united states and the united kingdom we find that educational attainment is related to several measures of political interest and involvement in both countries we find a strong and robust relationship between education and voting for the united states but not for the united kingdom our us results approach the uk findings when conditioning on registration possibly indicating that registration rules present a barrier to participation

teachers pay for performance in the long run the dynamic pattern of treatment effects on students educational and labour market outcomes in adulthood this paper examines the dynamic effects of a teachers pay for performance experiment on long term outcomes at adulthood the program led to a gradual increase in university education of the treated high school students reaching an increase of 0 25 years of schooling by age 28 30 the effects on employment and earnings were initially negative coinciding with a higher rate of enrollment in university but became positive and significant with time these gains are largely mediated by the positive effect of the program on several high school outcomes including quantitative and qualitative gains in the high stakes matriculation exams

changes in compulsory schooling and the causal effect of education on health evidence from germany in this paper we investigate the causal effect of years of schooling on health and health related behavior in west germany we apply an instrumental variables approach using as natural experiments several changes in compulsory schooling laws between 1949 and 1969 these law changes generate exogenous variation in years of schooling both across states and over time we find evidence for a strong and significant causal effect of years of schooling on long term illness for men but not for women moreover we provide somewhat weaker evidence of a causal effect of education on the likelihood of having weight problems for both sexes on the other hand we find little evidence for a causal effect of education on smoking behavior overall our estimates suggest significant non monetary returns to education with respect to health outcomes and not necessarily with respect to health related behavior

does compulsory school attendance affect schooling and earnings we establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school attendance laws individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age and can therefore drop out after completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain in school because of compulsory schooling laws we estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings by using quarter of birth as an instrument for education the instrumental variables estimate of the return to education is close to the ordinary least squares estimate suggesting that there is little bias in conventional estimates every developed country in the world has a compulsory schooling requirement yet little is known about the effect these laws have on educational attainment and earnings 1 this paper exploits an unusual natural experiment to estimate the impact of compulsory schooling laws in the united states the experiment stems from the fact that children born in different months of the year start school at different ages while compulsory schooling laws generally require students to remain in school until their sixteenth or seventeenth birthday in effect the interaction of school entry requirements and compulsory schooling laws compel students born

does school quality matter returns to education and the characteristics of public schools in the united states this paper estimates the effects of school quality measured by the pupil teacher ratio average term length and relative teacher pay on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and 1949 using earnings data from the 1980 census we find that men who were educated in states with higher quality schools have a higher return to additional years of schooling rates of return are also higher for individuals from states with better educated teachers and with a higher fraction of female teachers holding constant school quality measures however we find no evidence that parental income or education affects average state level rates of return

the compelling effects of compulsory schooling evidence from canada abstract compulsory school laws have existed for more than a hundred years and policies to mandate further education continue to be discussed the implications of these laws however are not well understood historical changes to compulsory schooling in canada permit an examination of their effects on would be dropouts under very different circumstances than those during changes in other countries mandating education substantially increased adult income and substantially decreased the likelihood of being below the low income cut off unemployed and in a manual occupation these findings suggest significant gains from this legislation which seem unlikely offset by the costs incurred while having to remain in school jel classification i20 i28

schooling information and nonmarket productivity contraceptive use and its effectiveness information from two u s fertility surveys on couples knowledge about and use of specific contraceptives are used to estimate the technology of human reproduction in order to examine the association between schooling and productivity in the household sector the results indicate that more schooled couples have a wider knowledge of contraceptive methods use more efficiently those contraceptive methods for which there is little information and large scope for misuse and are better able to mitigate the effects of their biological constraints fecundity on their fertility compared to less schooled couples excerpt

the impact of the great migration on mortality of african americans evidence from the deep south the great migration the massive migration of african americans out of the rural south to largely urban locations in the north midwest and west was a landmark event in u s our paper shows that this migration increased mortality of african americans born in the early twentieth century south this inference comes from an analysis that uses proximity of birthplace to railroad lines as an instrument for migration

poverty and the political economy of public education spending evidence from brazil a large body of literature has emphasized the elite capture of democratic institutions as the explanation for the low levels of spending on public education in many low income democracies this paper provides an alternative to that longstanding hypothesis motivated by new cross country facts and evidence from brazilian municipalities we hypothesize that many democratic developing countries might invest less in public education spending because poor decisive voters prefer the government to allocate resources elsewhere one possible explanation is that low income voters could instead favor redistributive programs that increase their incomes in the short run such as cash transfers to test for this possibility we design and implement an experimental survey and an incentivized choice experiment in brazil the findings from both interventions support our hypothesis

changes in compulsory schooling education and the distribution of wages in europe using data from 12 european countries and the variation across countries and over time in the changes of minimum school leaving age we study the effects of the quantity of education on the distribution of earnings we find that compulsory school reforms significantly affect educational attainment especially among individuals belonging to the lowest quantiles of the distribution of ability there is also evidence that additional education reduces conditional wage inequality and that education and ability are substitutes in the earnings function

priceless the nonpecuniary benefits of schooling copyright 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 by the american economic association permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of american economic association publications for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not distributed for profit or direct commercial advantage and that copies show this notice on the first page or initial screen of a display along with the full citation including the name of the author copyrights for components of this work owned by others than aea must be honored abstracting with credit is permitted the author has the right to republish post on servers redistribute to lists and use any component of this work in other works for others to do so requires prior specific permission and or a fee permissions may be requested from the american economic association administrative office by going to the contact us form and choosing copyright permissions request from the menu copyright 2016 aea

the impact of chernobyl on health and labour market performance using longitudinal data from ukraine we examine the extent of any long lasting effects of exposure to the chernobyl disaster on the health and labour market performance of the adult workforce variation in the local area level of radiation fallout from the chernobyl accident is considered as a random exogenous shock with which to try to establish its causal impact on poor health labour force participation hours worked and wages there appears to be a significant positive association between local area level radiation dosage and perception of poor health though much weaker associations between local area level dosage and other specific self reported health conditions there is also some evidence to suggest that those who lived in areas more exposed to chernobyl induced radiation have significantly lower levels of labour market performance 20 years on

social interactions in high school lessons from an earthquake after an earthquake hit southern italy in 1980 young men from certain towns were exempted from compulsory military service we show that the exemption raised high school graduation rates of boys by more than 2 percentage points we do this by comparing high school graduation rates of young exempt men and older nonexempt men from the least damaged areas and men of the same age groups from nearby towns that were not hit by the quake similar comparisons show that graduation rates of young women in the affected areas also increased since in italy women are not subject to the draft the findings suggest the presence of spillover effects jel i21 j13