Life consequences of school quality during childhood and adolescence

Education during childhood and adolescence plays a crucial role in children’s transitions to adulthood, placing them on different life trajectories that have important long-term health effects. Yet, the extensive literature nearly exclusively focused on years of completed schooling. Given that, ultimately, it is skill rather than the time spent in school that likely matters, the quality of schooling represents a different dimension of human capital but was dramatically understudied due to limitations in measures and data. Few studies have documented associations of school quality with various monetary and health outcomes. However, isolating the causal effect has been challenging due to unobserved confounding factors. This study will leverage a novel and unique dataset that links the US censuses with genealogical data and tracks individuals from childhood to adulthood and death. Leveraging the data’s detailed geographic identifiers, we are able to conduct causal inferences with a cross-border study design and instrumental variable analysis. This study will first investigate the short-run effect of school quality during childhood and adolescence on academic outcomes (Aim 1). Then, this study will examine the medium-run effect of school quality on early labor market experience and marriage outcomes in early adulthood. It also investigates the extent to which the effect of school quality is mediated by educational attainment, and how school quality modifies returns to education (Aim 2). Lastly, the project will estimate the long-run effect of school quality on midlife mortality and its lifetime effect on longevity (Aim 3).