Higher Education and Health Investments: Does More Schooling Affect Preventive Health Care Use?

While it is well-known that individuals with higher levels of education consume more preventive medical care, there are several potential explanations for this stylized fact. These explanations include causal and non-causal mechanisms, and distinguishing among explanations is relevant for accessing the importance of educational spillovers on lifetime health outcomes as well as uncovering the determinants of preventive care. In this paper, we use regression analysis, sibling fixed effects, and matching estimators to attempt to distinguish between causal and non-causal explanations of the impact of education on preventive care. In particular, we use a cohort of 10,000 Wisconsin high school graduates that has been followed for nearly 50 years and find evidence that attending college increases the likelihood of using several types of preventive care by approximately five to fifteen percent for college attendees in the early 1960s. This effect of greater education operates partly through occupational channels and access to care. These findings suggest that increases in education have the potential to spillover on long-term health choices.