Health, Wealth and Happiness: Why Pursue a Higher Education?
Economics of Education Review, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 245–256, 1998 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Pergamon Printed in Great Britain 0272-7757/98 $19.00+0.00 PII: S0272-7757(97)00064-2 Health, Wealth and Happiness: Why Pursue a Higher Education? Joop Hartog and Hessel Oosterbeek§ University of Amsterdam, Department of Economics, Roetersstraat 11, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands Abstract—We explore the effect of schooling on health, wealth and happiness for a cohort of Dutch individuals born around 1940. We also use observations on childhood IQ and family background. The most fortunate group is the group with a non-vocational intermediate level education: they score highest on health, wealth and happiness. We find that IQ affects health, but not wealth or happiness. Family background level increases wealth, but neither health nor happiness. With a father who worked indepen- dently, health, wealth and happiness are higher. Women are a miracle: compared with men, they are less wealthy, equally healthy but they are definitely happier. [JEL I10, J24, D31, D63] 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved 1. INTRODUCTION Besides purging the estimated schooling effect of biases, this provides us with information about the In its general formulation the human capital theory relative contributions of schooling, intelligence and treats schooling as an investment that may produce social background. The topic attracted renewed atten- different types of returns. Schooling may be ben- tion following the publication of The Bell Curve by eficial for such different outcomes as: labour market Herrnstein and Murray (1994), who claim that intelli- performance, success in the marriage market, health gence is the dominant factor in explaining a large and many other variables.
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