Abstract
The effect of education on health has been increasing over the past several decades. We hypothesize that this increasing disparity is related to health-related technical progress: more-educated people are the first to take advantage of technological advances that improve health. We test this hypothesis using data on disease-specific mortality ratesfor 1980 and 1990, and cancer registry data for 1973-1993. We estimate education gradients in mortality using compulsory schooling as a measure of education. We then relate these gradients to two measures of health-related innovation: the number of active drug ingredients available to treat a disease, and the rate of change in mortality from that disease. We find that more-educated individuals have a greater survival advantage in those diseases for which there has been more health-related technological progress.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 741-761 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Demography |
Volume | 45 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 2008 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Demography