IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jns/jbstat/v227y2007i5-6p725-745.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health and the Decision to Invest in Education

Author

Listed:
  • Schneider Brit S.

    (University of Bayreuth, Department of Law and Economics, Institute of Public Finance, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany)

  • Schneider Udo

    (University of Bayreuth, Department of Law and Economics, Institute of Public Finance, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany)

  • Ulrich Volker

    (University of Bayreuth, Department of Law and Economics, Institute of Public Finance, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany)

Abstract

The paper analyses the relationship between health and education in a two period human capital framework. The resulting substitution and investment effects between health and advanced training work in opposite direction and leave open questions for the empirical part. As econometric model we use a random effects probit model for panel data. Our data consist of 322 individuals for the two years 2004 and 2006. Thereby, we take into account that self-reported measures of health are usually vulnerable to a reporting bias due to anticipation and measurement errors. Estimation results show a dominant substitution effect between different levels of education, indicating that good health implies higher learning efficiency so that the same income can be achieved with lower investment in advanced training. In contrast, we find a dominant investment effect within an educational level, indicating that better health leads individuals with higher education to invest more in additional training.

Suggested Citation

  • Schneider Brit S. & Schneider Udo & Ulrich Volker, 2007. "Health and the Decision to Invest in Education," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 227(5-6), pages 725-746, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:jns:jbstat:v:227:y:2007:i:5-6:p:725-745
    DOI: 10.1515/jbnst-2007-5-618
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/jbnst-2007-5-618
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/jbnst-2007-5-618?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew M. Jones, 2009. "Panel Data Methods and Applications to Health Economics," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Terence C. Mills & Kerry Patterson (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Econometrics, chapter 12, pages 557-631, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Matthias Nübling & Hanfried H. Andersen & Axel Mühlbacher & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2007. "Computation of Standard Values for Physical and Mental Health Scale Scores Using the SOEP Version of SF12v2," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 127(1), pages 171-182.
    3. Disney, Richard & Emmerson, Carl & Wakefield, Matthew, 2006. "Ill health and retirement in Britain: A panel data-based analysis," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 621-649, July.
    4. Don Webber, 2002. "Policies to stimulate growth: should we invest in health or education?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(13), pages 1633-1643.
    5. Harold Alderman & Jere R. Behrman & Victor Lavy & Rekha Menon, 2001. "Child Health and School Enrollment: A Longitudinal Analysis," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 36(1), pages 185-205.
    6. Heckman, James J, 1976. "A Life-Cycle Model of Earnings, Learning, and Consumption," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(4), pages 11-44, August.
    7. Ronald Hagan & Andrew M. Jones & Nigel Rice, 2009. "Health and Retirement in Europe," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 6(10), pages 1-20, October.
    8. Cristina Hernandez-Quevedo & Andrew M Jones & Nigel Rice, "undated". "Reporting Bias and Heterogeneity in Self-Assessed Health. Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey," Discussion Papers 04/18, Department of Economics, University of York.
    9. Yoram Ben-Porath, 1967. "The Production of Human Capital and the Life Cycle of Earnings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75(4), pages 352-352.
    10. Grossman, Michael, 1972. "On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(2), pages 223-255, March-Apr.
    11. Williams, Joseph T, 1979. "Uncertainty and the Accumulation of Human Capital over the Life Cycle," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(4), pages 521-548, October.
    12. Rosemary Hyson & Janet Currie, 1999. "Is the Impact of Health Shocks Cushioned by Socioeconomic Status? The Case of Low Birthweight," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 245-250, May.
    13. Brown, Eleanor & Kaufold, Howard, 1988. "Human Capital Accumulation and the Optimal Level of Unemployment Insurance Provision," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(4), pages 493-514, October.
    14. Levhari, David & Weiss, Yoram, 1974. "The Effect of Risk on the Investment in Human Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(6), pages 950-963, December.
    15. Case, Anne & Fertig, Angela & Paxson, Christina, 2005. "The lasting impact of childhood health and circumstance," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 365-389, March.
    16. Paul Glewwe, 2002. "Schools and Skills in Developing Countries: Education Policies and Socioeconomic Outcomes," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(2), pages 436-482, June.
    17. Dan Anderberg & Fredrik Andersson, 2000. "Social Insurance with Risk‐Reducing Investments," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 67(265), pages 37-56, February.
    18. Selma J. Mushkin, 1962. "Health as an Investment," NBER Chapters, in: Investment in Human Beings, pages 129-157, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Brunello, Giorgio, 2002. "Absolute risk aversion and the returns to education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 635-640, December.
    20. Snow, Arthur & Warren, Ronald S, Jr, 1990. "Human Capital Investment and Labor Supply under Uncertainty," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 31(1), pages 195-206, February.
    21. Selma J. Mushkin, 1962. "Health as an Investment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(5), pages 129-129.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brit S. Schneider & Udo Schneider, 2009. "Determinants and Consequences of Health Behaviour: New Evidence from German Micro Data," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 253, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    2. PV Viswanath, 2018. "Microfinance and the Decision to Invest in Children’s Education," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-20, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Deniz Karaoğlan & Dürdane Şirin Saraçoğlu, 2018. "Socio-Economic Factors Affecting Early Childhood Health: the Case of Turkey," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 11(3), pages 1051-1075, June.
    2. Sarah Brown & Jennifer Roberts & Karl Taylor, 2010. "Reservation wages, labour market participation and health," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 173(3), pages 501-529, July.
    3. Deniz Karaoğlan & Dürdane Şirin Saracoğlu, 2016. "Socio-Economic Factors Affecting Early Childhood Health: The Case of Turkey," ERC Working Papers 1614, ERC - Economic Research Center, Middle East Technical University, revised 2016.
    4. Udo Schneider & Jürgen Zerth, 2011. "Improving Prevention Compliance through Appropriate Incentives: Theoretical Modelling and Empirical Evidence," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 147(I), pages 71-106, March.
    5. Owen O'Donnell & Eddy Van Doorslaer & Tom Van Ourti, 2013. "Health and Inequality," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 13-170/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Andrew M. Jones & Eddy Van Doorslaer & Teresa Bago D’Uva & Silvia Balia & Lynn Gambin & Cristina Hernández Quevedo & Xander Koolman & Nigel Rice, 2006. "Health and Wealth: Empirical Findings and Political Consequences," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 7(s1), pages 93-112, May.
    7. Chaitali Sinha, 2014. "Human Capital and Public Policy," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 3(1), pages 79-125, June.
    8. Saïd Hanchane & Abraham Lioui & David Touahri, 2006. "Human capital as a risky asset and the effect of uncertainty on the decision to invest," Working Papers halshs-00010139, HAL.
    9. Hernández-Quevedo, Cristina & Jones, Andrew M. & Rice, Nigel, 2008. "Persistence in health limitations: A European comparative analysis," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1472-1488, December.
    10. Brent Kreider, 2008. "Optimal Wage Taxation When Human Capital And Employment Are Endogenous," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 46(4), pages 660-675, October.
    11. Schneider, Udo & Zerth, Jürgen, 2008. "Improving prevention compliance through appropriate incentives," MPRA Paper 8280, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Christiansen, Charlotte & Nielsen, Helena Skyt, 2002. "The Educational Asset Market: A Finance Perspective on Human Capital Investment," Working Papers 02-10, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics.
    13. Piper, Brian, 2014. "A production function examination of the aggregate effects of nutrition," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 293-307.
    14. Syed M. Ahsan & Panagiotis Tsigaris, 2011. "The Utility Compensated Effects of a Wage Tax on Human Capital and Consumption Decisions," Public Finance Review, , vol. 39(4), pages 571-593, July.
    15. Akbulut-Yuksel, Mevlude & Kugler, Adriana D., 2016. "Intergenerational persistence of health: Do immigrants get healthier as they remain in the U.S. for more generations?," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 136-148.
    16. Jochen Hartwig, 2008. "Has Health Capital Formation Cured 'Baumol's Disease'? - Panel Granger Causality Evidence for OECD Countries," KOF Working papers 08-206, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    17. Yoshida, Ken, 2021. "Sleep, Worker's Health, and Social Welfare," MPRA Paper 106573, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Neha Kumra, 2017. "Childhood health and educational investment under risk," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-22, December.
    19. Andrén, Daniela & Palmer, Edward, 2001. "The Effect Of Sickness On Earnings," Working Papers in Economics 45, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    20. Maria Klonowska-Matynia & Radosław Sobko, 2021. "Spatial Analysis of the Relationship between Health Capital and the Level of Health Care Expenditure in Poland," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(Special 1), pages 133-151.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jns:jbstat:v:227:y:2007:i:5-6:p:725-745. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.