Secondary school fees and the causal effect of schooling on health behavior

Using German census data, we estimate the causal effect of education on smoking and overweight/obesity using the abolition of secondary school fees as instrumental variable. The West German federal states enacted this reform at different dates after World War II, generating exogenous variation in the access to secondary education. While we find a strong association between schooling and health behaviors using OLS, we do not find support for the notion that education causes better health behavior. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.