PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Malamud, Ofer
AU  - Mitrut, Andreea
AU  - Pop-Eleches, Cristian
TI  - The Effect of Education on Mortality and Health: Evidence from a Schooling Expansion in Romania
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.58.4.1118-9863R2
DP  - 2021 Apr 13
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 1118-9863R2
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2021/04/05/jhr.58.4.1118-9863R2.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2021/04/05/jhr.58.4.1118-9863R2.full
AB  - This paper examines a schooling expansion in Romania that increased educational attainment for successive cohorts born between 1945 and 1950. We use a difference-in-regression discontinuities (D-RD) design based on school entry cutoff dates to estimate impacts on mortality using 1994-2016 Vital Statistics data, self-reported health in the 2011 Romanian Census, and hospitalizations from 1997-2017 in-patient registers. We find that the schooling reform led to significant increases in years of schooling but did not affect mortality, hospitalizations, or self-reported health. These estimates provide new evidence for the causal effect of education on mortality and health outside of high-income countries and at lower margins of educational attainment.