1 Abstract
On average, educated people are healthier, wealthier and have higher life expectancy than those with less education. Numerous studies have attempted to determine whether these differences are caused by education, or are merely correlated with it and are ultimately caused by another factor. Previous studies have used a range of natural experiments to provide causal evidence. Here we exploit two natural experiments, perturbation of germline genetic variation associated with education which occurs at conception, known as Mendelian randomization, and a policy reform, the raising of the school leaving age in the UK in 1972. Previous studies have suggested that the differences in outcomes associated with education may be due to confounding. However, the two independent sources of variation we exploit largely imply consistent causal effects of education on outcomes much later in life.
Author contributions
NMD obtained funding for this study, analyzed and cleaned the data, interpreted results, wrote and revised the manuscript. MD interpreted the results, and wrote and revised the manuscript. GDS interpreted the results, wrote and revised the manuscript. FW interpreted the results, and wrote and revised the manuscript. GvdB interpreted the results, and wrote and revised the manuscript.
Acknowledgements
The Medical Research Council (MRC) and the University of Bristol support the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit [MC_UU_12013/1, MC_UU_12013/9]. The Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) support NMD via a Future Research Leaders grant [ES/N000757/1]. No funding body has influenced data collection, analysis or its interpretations. This publication is the work of the authors, who serve as the guarantors for the contents of this paper. This work was carried out using the computational facilities of the Advanced Computing Research Centre - http://www.bris.ac.uk/acrc/ and the Research Data Storage Facility of the University of Bristol - http://www.bris.ac.uk/acrc/storage/. This research was conducted using the UK Biobank Resource.