Seminar «Education and Health: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Turkey»

IZA-HSE University International Labor Seminar was held on  May 25, 2021.

Speaker: Jan Fidrmuc (University of Lille)

Title: Education and Health: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Turkey

This paper explores the causal effect of education on health overall, and specifically on mental wellbeing. To this end, we use a natural experiment, an increase in the compulsory education from 5 to 8 years in Turkey in 1997, to estimate the endogeneity-robust effect of education on health among Turkish women. Contrary to our expectations, we find evidence of an adverse effect of education on self-reported physical health, experiencing severe or extreme pain, and on mental health issues associated with depression. We argue that this finding may reflect greater awareness of symptoms of mental health problems among educated women, as well as an aspiration deficit among urban, married and not employed women who have invested in education but fail to realize a return on it. Joint paper with Mustafa Ozer and Mehmet Ali Eryurt.