Health, schooling and lifestyle among young adults in Finland

Abstract

SummaryThis was a longitudinal, general population study based on a Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort, using a structural equation approach to estimate the health production function and health input functions for four lifestyle variables (smoking, alcohol consumption, exercise and unhealthy diet) for males and females. In particular, we examined the productive and allocative effects of education on health. We used 15D, a generic measure of healthrelated quality of life, as a single index score measure but we also estimated models for some of its dimensions. Among the males, the important factors impacting on health were education and all the four lifestyle factors, as well as some exogenous variables at 31 years and variables describing parents' background, and health and behaviour at 14 years. An increase of five years in schooling increased the health score by 0.008, of which about 50% was due to direct effect and 50% due to indirect effects. Among the females, education does not impact on health, but health was affected by the use of alcohol, exercise and diet, but not by smoking.Our results indicate that policy options that increase education among men will increase their health indirectly via healthier lifestyles. However, since the total effect was rather modest and the direct effect insignificant, an increase of schooling is not a cost-effective way to increase health given the present high educational level of Finland. The young adults' and particularly women's internationally high educational status in Finland might be a reason why we find only a modest effect of schooling on health and the non-existence of such effects among women.

Should we brush twice a day? Determinants of dental health among young adults in Finland

“…It is therefore much in line with results from earlier economic studies [16,21,46,47]. The study of Häkkinen et al [26] also identifies a significantly positive connection between education and general health, but it stresses the allocative efficiency of education via lifestyle choices, as opposed to the productive efficiency of education; both findings are exclusively for males. In our study, education seems to play an important role in reducing caries via its dominant direct effect rather than its indirect effect through dental care use (cf.…”

“…Some family background effects are found (mother's schooling, father's socioeconomic status) on the young adults' general health in the study of Häkkinen et al [26]. Here, no such associations and no significant association of income with caries or that of income with dental care use are found.…”

“…The study of Häkkinen et al [26], in which the same longitudinal data are used, indicates that endogeneity is mostly involved in the individual lifestyle choices, via which general health is influenced. It is also possible that in our study dental health behavior variables are connected to education.…”

“…Attrition considerably minimized the original study population (Appendix 1). According to an analysis of sample selection, the proportion of cases left out of the latest questionnaire study was higher among males (59% of male cases) than among females (52% of female cases), and the probability of being included in the study was positively associated with education (see [26], Appendix A).…”

The effect of schooling on problem drinking: evidence from Australian twins

“…The 'health gradient' literature links problem drinking with education (Cutler and Lleras-Muney, 2006;Furne´e et al, 2008), with several studies finding that more educated people consume less alcohol in ethanol equivalents (Baltagi and Griffin, 1995;Sharpe et al, 2001;Ha¨kkinen et al, 2006). A niche within this literature focusses on excessive drinking.…”