More on Schooling and Longevity

Arnold Kling responding to the NY Times article on longevity and education I blogged about yesterday:

I am inclined to a prior that the value of years of schooling tends to be overstated in general, which makes me a "motivated skeptic" of the Lleras-Muney result. But I am hard pressed to come up with an attack on her appoach.

Still, the quantitative effects are small. Kolata writes,

It turned out that life expectancy at age 35 was extended by as much as one and a half years simply by going to school for one extra year.

For someone who hates school, this might not be compelling. (If spending a year in prison increased your life expectancy by eighteen months, would that make you want to do time?)

To me, the main value of Kolata's piece is to point out that not all improvements in longevity and other health outcomes are due to medical treatment. This is an important fact to keep in mind.

That is indeed an important fact to keep in mind.