Could Easier Access to University Improve Health and Reduce Health Inequalities?

Summary, in English

This paper estimates the impact of university education on medical care use and its income related inequality. We do this by exploiting an arbitrary university eligibility rule in Sweden combined with regression discontinuity design for the years 2003-2013 for students who graduated 2003-2005. We find a clear jump in university attendance due to university eligibility. This jump coincides with a positive jump in prescriptions for contraceptives for females but also a positive jump in mental health related hospital admissions for males. Analysis of the inequality impact of tertiary eligibility finds no clear impact on medical care use by socioeconomic status of the parents. The results imply that easing access to university for the lower ability student will lead to an increase in contraceptive use without increasing its socioeconomic related inequality. At the same time, the results highlight that universities may need to do more to take care of the mental health of their least able students.

• Author: Gawain Heckley; Martin Nordin; Ulf-Göran Gerdtham
• Department/s: Health Economics; Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Demography; AgriFood Economics Centre, Lund University School of Economics and Management; EpiHealth: Epidemiology for Health
• Publishing year: 2018-03-13
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Working Papers
• Issue: 2018:5
• Full text: - 2 MB; Download statistics
• Links: https://swopec.hhs.se/lunewp/abs/lunewp2018_005.htm
• Document type: Working paper
• Publisher: Department of Economics, Lund University
• Topic: Economics
• Keywords: Health returns to education, demand for medical care, causes of health inequality, Regression Discontinuity Design, Concentration Index; Health returns to education; demand for medical care; causes of health inequality; Regression Discontinuity Design; Concentration Index; I12; I14; I26
• Status: Published
• Research group: Health Economics