Life Expectancy and Human Capital Investments: Evidence from Maternal Mortality Declines-super-*
Theory suggests that longer life expectancy encourages educational investment because a longer time horizon increases the value of investments that pay out over time. To estimate the magnitude of this effect, we examine a sudden drop in maternal mortality in Sri Lanka between 1946 and 1953, which sharply increased the life expectancy of girls. We assess whether girls' education relative to boys' increases more in areas with larger maternal mortality declines. We find that for every extra year of life expectancy, literacy increases by 0.7 percentage points (2%) and years of education increase by 0.11 years (3%). (c) 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..
Year of publication: |
2009
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Authors: | Jayachandran, Seema ; Lleras-Muney, Adriana |
Published in: |
The Quarterly Journal of Economics. - MIT Press. - Vol. 124.2009, 1, p. 349-397
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Publisher: |
MIT Press |
Saved in:
Online Resource
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