Does Education Affect Health? Evidence From China Compulsory Schooling Law

Abstract

This paper uses data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) to study the impact of education on health among the labor force population. According to OLS results, education has a positive correlation with health and physical activity, while it is negatively correlated with overweightness and smoking. In addition, this paper uses the external changes in the compulsory education law (CSL) as instruments to study the causality of education on health. The 2SLS results indicate that one extra year of education increases 0.8 percentage points the possibility of reporting excellent or good health and the likelihood of doing physical activity by 1.7 percentage points. Education has no significant effect on overall the Body Mass Index (BMI)-related variables and smoking status. Further analysis also shows that education has a greater impact on women. Moreover, CSL can significantly improve national health and reduce the educational gap between rural and urban areas.