Health. Skills. Education.

New Economic Perspectives on the Health-Education Nexus

May 29 – May 31, 2015

Essen, Germany

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For further details, please see the Call for papers.

About the topic

It is well established that more education associates with better health, and this relationship has been persistent and even strengthening over time. A wide range of studies in economics have addressed the identification problem and assessed the causal impact of education on various health outcomes – with mixed results. This general uncertainty regarding the effects of education on health is mirrored by significant gaps in our knowledge of how the health-education nexus operates. The conference aims at improving our understanding of the relationship between education and health, with particular focus on the multi-dimensionality of health; on the dynamic aspects of production of health and human capital; and on the role of skills, personality traits and family background.

Examples of suitable topics:

• Sex, drugs, and health: How education affects smoking, alcohol consumption, diet, sport, and other lifestyle factors
• The effects of cognitive abilities on health and health behavior
• Healthy minds in healthy bodies: The relationship between non-cognitive skills, mental health and physical health
• The effect of physical and mental health on educational attainment
• Early life education and health inequality
• The role of health in the intergenerational transmission of human capital, and the role of education in the intergenerational transmission of health
• Complementarity between initial socio-economic and health conditions and education
• The impact of education on personality traits
• How culture shapes the education-health nexus
• How does education affect the perception of health?
• Disentangling the endogeneity of education in health: Identification strategies and estimation issues

Keynote Speakers

• Anna Aizer, Brown University
• Jishnu Das, The World Bank 
• Bhash Mazumder, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
• Kjell Salvanes, Norwegian School of Economics

Scientific Committee

• Martin Karlsson, University Duisburg-Essen
• Therese Nilsson, Lund University
• Bénédicte Apouey, Paris School of Economics
• Victoria Baranov, University of Melbourne
• Thomas Buchmueller, University of Michigan
• Gabriella Conti, University College London
• Paul Devereux, University College Dublin
• Stephanie von Hinke Kessler Scholder, Bristol University
• Pramila Krishnan, Cambridge University
• Heather Royer, University of California -- Santa Barbara
• Tom van Ourti, Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Nicolas Ziebarth, Cornell University

Call for Papers

Papers on relevant topics should be sent in pdf format by 28 February 2015 to contact.conference (at) ibes.uni-due.de. Contributions from young researchers are encouraged. There is no registration fee for the conference.