DP15252 Does Education Matter? Tests from Extensions of Compulsory Schooling in England and Wales 1919-22, 1947, and 1972
Schooling and social outcomes correlate strongly. But are these connections causal? Previous
papers for England using compulsory schooling to identify causal effects have produced conflicting
results. Some found significant effects of schooling on adult longevity and on earnings,
others found no effects. Here we measure the consequence of extending compulsory schooling
in England to ages 14, 15 and 16 in the years 1919-22, 1947 and 1972. From administrative
data these increases in compulsory schooling added 0.43, 0.60 and 0.43 years of education to
the affected cohorts. We estimate the effects of these increases in schooling for each cohort
on measures of adult longevity, on dwelling values in 1999 (an index of lifetime incomes), and
on the the social characteristics of the places where the affected cohorts died. Since we have
access to all the vital registration records, and a nearly complete sample of the 1999 electoral
register, we find with high precision that all the schooling extensions failed to increase adult
longevity (as had been found previously for the 1947 and 1972 extensions), dwelling values, or
the social status of the communities people die in. Compulsory schooling ages 14-16 had no
effect, at the cohort level, on social outcomes in England.
