Economic and Psychological Origins of Health Capital Accumulation

Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN

Investigators

Abstract

The aim of this project is to estimate the effects of cognitive skills, socioemotional skills, and education on health behaviors, health-related lifestyles, health, and longevity. In addition, the PI's goal is to uncover the behavioral mechanisms behind the effects of skills and education on longevity. He uses mediation analysis to show that health behaviors, lifestyles, earnings, and job risk are major mechanisms behind the estimated effects. Formal education is itself a major mediator and helps explain why early cognitive and socioemotional skills affect health and longevity. The project has both scientific and policy implications. It aims to demonstrate how college education and socioemotional skills acquired in early life affect long run health-related outcomes. The results will inform education policies such as student loans and grants for college education and social interventions that help children improve their socioemotional skills. It is expected that these social interventions improve health outcomes and decrease health inequality. The identification of causal effects is based on twin fixed effects and its generalizations and on identification from a structure. The PI leverages the fact that identical twins raised together share both genes and family background. The team will use new data on mortality that were collected for the Minnesota Twin Registry. Whether or not education has a causal effect on longevity is still an unresolved question since many results in the recent literature contradict each other. In addition, the PI investigates developmental origins of health behaviors and other health-related outcomes. Exploration of the mechanisms behind the effects of skill and education on longevity requires a more structural approach. The team estimates a system of recursive simultaneous equations that links skills to college education choice, college education to mediators, and mediators to longevity conditional on detailed background controls.