Understanding Differences in Health Behaviors by Education

By David M. Cutler, A. Lleras-Muney. Journal of Health Economics, 2009

1,804 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using a variety of data sets from two countries, we examine possible explanations for the relationship between education and health behaviors, known as the education gradient. We show that income, health insurance, and family background can account for about 30 percent of the gradient. Knowledge and measures of cognitive ability explain an additional 30 percent. Social networks account for another 10 percent. Our proxies for discounting, risk aversion, or the value of future do not account for any of the education gradient, and neither do personality factors such as a sense of control of oneself or over one’s life.

Subfields: Health, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f71bcbaff631df4537f54590bbc3925105573a08

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Citations in the corpus

Non-Production Benefits of Education: Crime, Health, and Good Citizenship (2011, methodology): “Despite these findings, evidence by Kenkel (1991) and Cutler and Lleras-Muney (2010) suggests that differences in health-specific knowledge by education account for only small differences in behavior.”
Energy poverty and public health: Global evidence (2021, result): “This is consistent with our benchmark results, as well as the findings of Winkleby et al. (1992) and Cutler and Lleras-Muney (2010), who argue that early childhood education is beneficial for health outcomes.”
Socioeconomic Disparities in Health Behaviors (2010, background): “The tendency of low-SES groups to adopt unhealthy behaviors despite the monetary and health costs is a puzzle that many studies have examined but, with one very recent exception (Cutler & Lleras-Muney 2010), not addressed in a comprehensive way.”
The Economic Value of Opportunity Youth (2012, background): “This strong relationship includes both health conditions and health behaviors such as diet and exercise and only a fraction of the association is driven by income; much of it is driven by health knowledge (Cutler and Lleras-Muney, 2010; Kimbro et al. 2008).”
Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity (2017, background): “chronic diseases, health behaviors (e.g., smoking status, heavy drinking physical activity, preventive services or screening behavior, automobile and home safety) and more (Baum et al., 2013; Cutler and Lleras-Muney, 2006, 2010; Feinstein et al., 2006; Krueger et al., 2015; Rostron et al., 2010).”
The Effect of Education on Adult Health and Mortality: Evidence from Britain. NBER Working Paper No. 16013. (2010, background): “Among those with exactly a high school degree, the analogous figure was 14.4 percent.3 As shown by Banks et al. (2006) and Cutler & Lleras-Muney (2007), similar patterns can be found in the UK.”
Education Improves Public Health and Promotes Health Equity (2015, neutral): “Analysis of a representative survey of adults aged >25 years between 1990 and 2000 indicates that the prevalence of several risk behaviors is generally higher among those with fewer than nine years of formal education, begins to decline among those who have nine to 12 years of formal education, and ”
Green Returns to Education: Does Schooling Contribute to Pro-Environmental Behaviours? Evidence from Thailand (2017, background): “Furthermore, education enhances the acquisition of knowledge, values and priorities as well as the capacity to plan for the future and efficiency in allocation of resources (Cutler and Lleras-Muney, 2010; Kenkel, 1991).”
The Benefits of Attending Community College: A Review of the Evidence (2011, methodology): “Using the National Health Interview Surveys from 1990 to 2000, Cutler and Lleras-Muney (2010) estimated the health impacts of additional years of education (controlling for covariates).”
Family Health Behaviors (2017, positive): “…we include education as the best predictor included in our data that has been shown to strongly correlate with this behavior (see, e.g., Cutler and Lleras-Muney 2010).20 Then, we match to each spouse a measure of his or her underlying risk based on the predicted probability of a…”
Epigenetic clock analysis of diet, exercise, education, and lifestyle factors (2017, positive): “In addition to diet, other behaviors such as moderate alcohol consumption, increased physical activity, and higher educational attainment have all been linked to reductions in morbidity and mortality risk [9-16].”
Education Development in China: Education Return, Quality, and Equity (2019, background): “There is abundant research studying the relationship between education and health, finding evidence that an ‘health–education gradient’ exists [22].”