| Author/Presenter |
Steven Lehrer (Queen's University) |
| Co-author |
Jason Fletcher (Yale University) |
| Title |
Using Genetic Lotteries within Families to Examine the Causal Impact of Poor Health on Academic Achievement |
| Abstract |
One of the most robust relationships in the social sciences is the large positive correlation between health and education, but establishing a causal link remains a substantial challenge. This paper exploits differences in genetic inheritance among children within the same family to estimate the impact of several poor health conditions on academic outcomes. Our empirical strategy permits us to elucidate the extent to which developmental differences between twins and siblings are due to differences in genetic inheritance. We present evidence of large impacts of poor mental health on academic achievement. Our estimates suggest that accounting for family fixed effects is important but these strategies cannot fully account for the endogeneity of poor heath. Our results demonstrate that the presence of comorbid conditions presents immense challenges for empirical studies that aim to estimate the impact of specific health conditions. Finally, the quantitative and qualitative patterns of our empirical results are robust to multiple sample definitions including the restriction to using only dizygotic twins of the same gender. |