Eff ects of Compulsory Schooling on Mortality – Evidence from Sweden # 441

The working papers published in the Series constitute work in progress circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comments. Views expressed represent exclusively the authors' own opinions and do not necessarily refl ect those of the editors. Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der deutschen National-bibliografi e; detaillierte bibliografi sche Daten sind im Internet über: Abstract Theoretically, there are several reasons to expect education to have a positive eff ect on health, and empirical research suggests that education can be an important health determinant. However, it has not yet been established whether education and health are indeed causally-related, and the eff ects found in previous studies may be partially attributable to methodological weaknesses. Moreover, existing evidence on the education-health relationship using information of schooling reforms for identication, generally uses information from fairly recent reforms implying that health outcomes are observed only over a limited time period. This paper examines the eff ect of education on mortality using information on a national roll-out of a reform leading to one extra year of compulsory schooling in Sweden. In 1936, the national government made a seventh school year compulsory; however, the implementation was decided at the school district level, and the reform was implemented over a period of 12 years. Taking advantage of the variation in the timing of the implementation across school districts,by using county-level proportions of reformed districts, census data and administrative mortality data, we fi nd that the extra compulsory school year reduced mortality. In fact, the mortality reduction is discernible already before the age of 30 and then grows in magnitude until the age of 55–60. Industrial Economics (IFN). – The authors would like to thank Martin Salm, participants in the conference Economics of Disease in Darmstadt, 2012, two anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions, and Nina Schwarz and Gero Sicheneder for able research assistance. Martin Fischer gratefully acknowledges fi nancial support by the Ruhr Graduate School in Economics, and Therese Nilsson gratefully acknowledges fi nancial support from the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation.– All correspondence to: