Parental Education and Child Health: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Taiwan.

In 1968, the Taiwanese government extended compulsory education from six to nine years and opened over 150 new junior high schools at a differential rate among regions. Within each region, we exploit variations across cohorts in new junior high school openings to construct an instrument for schooling and employ it to estimate the causal effects of mother's or father's schooling on infant birth outcomes in the years 1978-1999. Parents' schooling does indeed cause favorable infant health outcomes. The increase in schooling associated with the reform saved almost 1 infant life in 1,000 live births. "The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income." Gina Kolata, "A Surprising Secret to Long Life: Stay in School,"New York Times, January 3, 2007, p. 1.