%0 Journal Article %J Labour Economics %D 2021 %T The effect of education on spousal education: a genetic approach %A Nicola Barban %A De Cao, Elisabetta %A Oreffice, Sonia %A Quintana-Domeque, Climent %K Causality %K genes %K instrumental variables %K Matching %K Plausibly exogenous %X We investigate the causal effect of education on spousal education using a sample of couples from the Health and Retirement Study. We estimate reduced-form linear matching functions derived from a parsimonious matching model which links spouses’ education. Using OLS we find that an additional year in husband’s (resp. wife’s) education is associated with an average increase in wife’s (resp. husband’s) education of 0.41 years —95% CI: 0.37, 0.45 (resp. 0.63 years —95% CI: 0.57, 0.68). To deal with endogeneity issues due to measurement error and omitted variables, we use a measure of genetic propensity (polygenic score) for educational attainment as an instrumental variable. Assuming that our instrument is valid, our 2SLS estimate suggests that an additional year in husband’s (resp. wife’s) education increases wife’s (resp. husband’s) education by about 0.49 years —95% CI: 0.35, 0.62 (resp. 0.76 —95% CI: 0.56, 0.96). Since greater genetic propensity for educational attainment has been linked to a range of personality and cognitive skills, we allow for the possibility that the exclusion restriction is violated using the plausible exogenous approach by Conley et al. (2012). A positive causal effect of education on spousal education cannot be ruled out, as long as one standard deviation increase in husband’s (wife’s) genetic propensity for education directly increases wife’s (husband’s) education by less than 0.2 (0.3) years. %B Labour Economics %V 71 %P 102023 %@ 0927-5371 %G eng %R 10.1016/j.labeco.2021.102023 %0 Journal Article %J Preventive Medicine %D 2019 %T Educational attainment and allostatic load in later life: Evidence using genetic markers %A Ding, Xuejie %A Nicola Barban %A Melinda C Mills %K Allostatic load %K Instrumental variable %K Mendelian randomization %K Polygenic risk score %K Years of education %X Education is strongly correlated with health outcomes in older adulthood. Whether the impact of education expansion improves health remains unclear due to a lack of clarity over the causal relationship. Previous health research within the social sciences has tended to use specific activities of daily living or self-reported health status. This study uses a broader and objective health measure - allostatic load (AL) - to take into consideration the exposures that accumulate throughout the life course. This paper applies a Mendelian Randomization (MR) approach to identify causality in relation to education on health as measured by AL. Using the Health and Retirement Study 2008 (N = 3935), we adopt a polygenic score built from genetic variants associated with years of education. To test whether our analyses violate the exclusion assumption, we further run MR Egger regressions to test for bias from pleiotropy. We also explore the potential pathways between education and AL, including smoking, drinking, marital length, health insurance, etc. Using this genetic instrument, we find a 0.3 unit (19% of a standard deviation) reduction in AL per year of schooling. The effect is mainly driven by BMI and Hba1c. Smoking and marital stability are two potential pathways that also causally influenced by education. If our main and sensitivity analyses are valid, the results find support that a higher level of education is causally related to better health in older adulthood. %B Preventive Medicine %V 129 %P 105866 %8 DEC %G eng %9 Article %R 10.1016/j.ypmed.2019.105866