Date: November 29, 2019

Time: 5:15-6:45 p.m.

Venue: Seminar Room B, 11th Floor, Bldg.No.2

Speaker:  Yichen Shen (Graduate School of Economics, Waseda University)

Language: English

Organizer: Takuya Hasebe

Title: The Impact of Higher Education on Health Behaviors: Evidence from Firehorse Year

Abstract: Over the past decades, economists have established that higher education is associated with lower mortality and heathy behavior using an instrumental variable approach. An obstacle in using an instrumental approach is finding an instrument which is relevant and exogenous. To this end, we leverage a competition shock for college enrollment from Firehorse Year in Japan. In 1966, Japanese fertility rates decline significantly as a result of the belief of Firehorse Year, parents avoid having children as women born into this year are believe to be “unlucky”. Under Japanese education system, school year starts at April of each year. That is, Firehore School Year starts at April of 1966 and ends at March of 1967. Consequentially, a mismatch group exists between Firehorse Year and Firehorse School Year, people born between January of 1967 and March of 1967. The mismatch group experiences a reduction in competition for college enrollment without the parental selection of Firehorse Year. Using this mismatch as an instrument for education, we investigate the causal impact of higher education on smoking, alcohol use, and sleep behaviors. Using 2010 to 2016 Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions, we show that higher education significant reduce the probability of being an ever smoker, a current smoker, an ever drinker, and a daily current drinker. Conversely, we do not find any impact of higher education on adequate sleep and good sleep. Furthermore, we examine the mechanism behind the link between education and health behavior through stress-based mechanism. We show that higher education significantly reduces income-related stresses, such as finance-related and living condition-related stresses. In turns, it translates into a reduction of smoking and alcohol use behavior.