Schooling, Skills, and Self-rated Health

Abstract

Education is a key sociological variable in the explanation of health and health disparities. Conventional wisdom emphasizes a life course-human capital perspective with expectations of causal effects that are quasi-linear, large in magnitude for high levels of educational attainment, and reasonably robust in the face of measured and unmeasured explanatory factors. We challenge this wisdom by offering an alternative theoretical account and an empirical investigation organized around the role of measured and unmeasured cognitive and noncognitive skills as confounders in the association between educational attainment and health. Based on longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1997 spanning mid-adolescence through early adulthood, results indicate that (1) effects of educational attainment are vulnerable to issues of omitted variable bias, (2) measured indicators of cognitive and noncognitive skills account for a significant proportion of the traditionally observed effect of educational attainment, (3) such skills have effects larger than that of even the highest levels of educational attainment when appropriate controls for unmeasured heterogeneity are incorporated, and (4) models that most stringently control for such time-stable abilities show little evidence of a substantive association between educational attainment and health.

Education and Physical Health Trajectories in Later Life: A Comparative Study

“…Numerous studies have shown that parental education as well as early-life health and economic hardship predict educational attainment and partly explain the relationship between education and adult health (Behrman et al 2011; Duke and Macmillan 2016; Lynch and Hippel 2015; Ross and Mirowsky 2011). In the absence of comparative studies, the role of institutional factors in moderating health selection into education remains unexplored.…”

Intergenerational Educational Pathways and Self-Rated Health in Adolescence and Young Adulthood: Results of the German KiGGS Cohort

“…It is very likely that there are some stronger but unrecognized additional factors that explain some of the observed associations. Cognitive and non-cognitive skills may be relevant to this context [82] or the economic situation of young adults themselves.…”

Childhood disadvantage, education, and psychological distress in adulthood: A three-wave population-based study

“…Previous studies have consistently shown a negative association between education level and psychological distress (Chung and Joung, 2017;Jeong and Veenstra, 2017;Sheikh et al, 2014Sheikh et al, , 2017, whereas others have shown that unemployment, averse work conditions, and high job demands are positively associated with psychological distress (Chung and Joung, 2017;Sheikh et al, 2017;Torres et al, 2016;Ylli et al, 2016). Other evidence suggests that cognitive (e.g., comprehension) and noncognitive skills (e.g., socioemotional regulation) account for a significant proportion of the effect of education on health (Duke and Macmillan, 2016;Opdebeeck et al, 2016).…”

“…Different approaches or theories for understanding the association between childhood disadvantage and psychological distress in adulthood have been debated (Pearlin, 1989;Ross and Mirowsky, 1999;Sheikh, 2017aSheikh, , b, 2018. The 'human capital accumulation' explanation puts the emphasis on socioeconomic pathways (i.e., via cognitive ability, intellectual functioning, education level, self-regulation, and sense of mastery) (Currie and Almond, 2011;Duke and Macmillan, 2016;Havari and Mazzonna, 2015;Kuhlman et al, 2017;Nicolaisen et al, 2017;Opdebeeck et al, 2016;Sheikh et al, 2017).…”