Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

HERO Online Working Paper Series,
University of Oslo, Health Economics Research Programme

No 2014:1: Individual investments in education and health

Jared C. Carbone and Snorre Kverndokk ()
Additional contact information
Jared C. Carbone: Department of Economics, University of Calgary
Snorre Kverndokk: Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research, Postal: Gaustadalleen 21, 0349 Oslo, Norway

Abstract: Empirical studies show that years of schooling are positively correlated with good health, and that education is better correlated with health than with variables like occupation and income. This can be explained in different ways as the implication may go from education to health, from health to education, and there may be variables that influence health and education in the same direction. The effect of different policy instruments to reduce the social gradient in health will depend on the strength of these causalities. In this paper we formalize a model that simultaneously determines an individual’s demand for knowledge and health based on the mentioned causal effects. We study the impacts on both health and education of different policy instruments such as subsidies on medical care, subsidizing schooling, income tax reduction, lump sum transfers and improving health at young age. Our results indicate that income transfers such as distributional policies may be the best instrument to improve welfare, while subsidies to medical care is the best instrument for longevity. However, subsidies to medical care or education would require large imperfections in the markets for health and education to be more welfare improving than distributional policies. Finally, our simulations suggest that underlying factors that impact both health and education is the main explanation for the correlation shown empirically.

Keywords: Demand for health; Demand for education; Human capital; Numerical modeling; Causality

JEL-codes: C61; D91; I12; I21

55 pages, March 1, 2014

Full text files

hero2014-1.pdf PDF-file 

Download statistics

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Kristi Brinkmann Lenander ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

This page generated on 2024-02-05 17:13:16.