Working Paper: NBER ID: w13947
Authors: Seema Jayachandran; Adriana Lleras-Muney
Abstract: Longer life expectancy should encourage human capital accumulation, since a longer time horizon increases the value of investments that pay out over time. Previous work has been unable to determine the empirical importance of this life-expectancy effect due to the difficulty of isolating it from other effects of health on education. We examine a sudden drop in maternal mortality risk in Sri Lanka between 1946 and 1953, which creates a sharp increase in life expectancy for school-age girls without contemporaneous effects on health, and which also allows for the use of boys as a control group. Using additional geographic variation, we find that the 70% reduction in maternal mortality risk over the sample period increased female life expectancy at age 15 by 4.1%, female literacy by 2.5%, and female years of education by 4.0%.
Keywords: life expectancy; human capital; maternal mortality; education; Sri Lanka
JEL Codes: I10; I20; O15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Female Life Expectancy at age 15 (J17) | Female Literacy Rates (F63) |
| Female Life Expectancy at age 15 (J17) | Years of Education for Females (I21) |
| Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) declines (O15) | Female Life Expectancy at age 15 (J17) |
| Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) declines (O15) | Female Literacy Rates (F63) |
| Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) declines (O15) | Years of Education for Females (I21) |