Life expectancy and human capital investments
Subtitle: evidence from maternal mortality declines
By: Seema Jayachandran, Adriana Lleras-Muney.
Contributors: Lleras-Muney, Adriana, 1974-; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 13947; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) -- working paper no. 13947.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Description: "Longer life expectancy should encourage human capital accumulation, since a longer time horizon increases the value of investments that pay out over time.  Previous work has been unable to determine the empirical importance of this life-expectancy effect due to the difficulty of isolating it from other effects of health on education.  We examine a sudden drop in maternal mortality risk in Sri Lanka between 1946 and 1953, which creates a sharp increase in life expectancy for school-age girls without contemporaneous effects on health, and which also allows for the use of boys as a control group.  Using additional geographic variation, we find that the 70% reduction in maternal mortality risk over the sample period increased female life expectancy at age 15 by 4.1%, female literacy by 2.5%, and female years of education by 4.0%"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 7/2/2008.

Includes bibliographical references.

Also available in print.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.