Premium
DOES EDUCATION REALLY IMPROVE HEALTH? A META‐ANALYSIS
Author(s) -
Xue Xindong,
Cheng Mingmei,
Zhang Wangyongxin
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of economic surveys
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.657
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 1467-6419
pISSN - 0950-0804
DOI - 10.1111/joes.12399
Subject(s) - endogeneity , meta analysis , frequentist inference , econometrics , economics , publication bias , bayesian probability , population health , meta regression , public economics , bayesian inference , statistics , medicine , health care , economic growth , mathematics
While numerous studies assess the relationship between education and health, no consensus has been reached on whether education really improves health. We perform a meta‐analysis of 4866 estimates gleaned from 99 published studies that examine the health effects of education. We find that the current literature suffers from moderate publication bias towards the positive effects of education on health. After correcting for publication bias with an array of sophisticated methods, we find that the overall effect size is practically zero, indicating that education generates no discernible benefits to health. The heterogeneity analysis by Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) and Frequentist Model Averaging (FMA) reveals that the reported estimates can be largely explained by whether the econometric models control for endogeneity of education, the types of data and the differences in health measurements. Our results also suggest that education may not be an effective policy option for promoting population health.