Nber Working Paper Series Explaining the Rise in Educational Gradients in Mortality
نویسندگان
چکیده
The long-standing inverse relationship between education and mortality strengthened substantially later in the 20th century. This paper examines the reasons for this increase. We show that behavioral risk factors are not of primary importance. Smoking has declined more for the better educated, but not enough to explain the trend. Obesity has risen at similar rates across education groups, and control of blood pressure and cholesterol has increased fairly uniformly as well. Rather, our results show that the mortality returns to risk factors, and conditional on risk factors, the return to education, have grown over time. David M. Cutler Department of Economics Harvard University 1875 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 and NBER [email protected] Fabian Lange Department of Economics Yale University P.O. Box 208269 New Haven, CT 06520-8269 [email protected] Ellen Meara Department of Health Care Policy Harvard Medical School 180 Longwood Avenue Boston, MA 02115-5899 and NBER [email protected] Seth Richards Department of Economics University of Pennsylvania 3718 Locust Walk Philadelphia, PA 19104 [email protected] Christopher J. Ruhm Department of Economics Bryan School, UNCG P.O. Box 26165 Greensboro, NC 27402-6165 and NBER [email protected]
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