The effects of education on health
Wim Groot, Department of Economics, Faculty of Health Sciences, Maastricht University
This paper analyses the relation between two important aspects of human capital: education and health. We use data from a large survey for the Netherlands to estimate the education effects on health. We estimate that the QALY weights for education are 0.006 for men and 0.003 for women. Depending on the value of a statistical life year the monetary value of the health gain of a year of education is Euro 600 – 1380 for men and Euro 300 – 690 for women. At the average value of the GDP per capita this implies a 1.3% – 5.8% health return to education. We further test for causality in the relation between education and health and for the effects of unobserved heterogeneity. Both do not appear to affect our results.
Date: 09 March-00 0000
