The Causal Effect of Education on Health: What is the Role of Health Behaviors?
研究了教育对50岁以上欧洲人健康的因果效应，发现健康行为（吸烟、饮酒、运动、体重指数）在短期解释约四分之一、长期解释约三分之一的效应。
We investigate the causal effect of education on health and the part of it that is attributable to health behaviors by distinguishing between short-run and long-run mediating effects: whereas, in the former, only behaviors in the immediate past are taken into account, in the latter, we consider the entire history of behaviors. We use two identification strategies: instrumental variables based on compulsory schooling reforms and a combined aggregation, differencing, and selection on an observables technique to address the endogeneity of both education and behaviors in the health production function. Using panel data for European countries, we find that education has a protective effect for European men and women aged 50+. We find that the mediating effects of health behaviors-measured by smoking, drinking, exercising, and the body mass index-account in the short run for around a quarter and in the long run for around a third of the entire effect of education on health.