Relationship between Education Level and Health

There exist many theories regarding correlation between education and health, however there is still no general consensus. This paper aims at investigating whether there is some evidence of the positive education-health relationship in Russia on the basis of RLMS data. Three model specifications are used to assess the magnitude of educational effects on various health measures. Different sets of socio-economic characteristics are considered as regressors in three specifications. Behavioural and health measures are viewed as dependent variables. Pooled OLS, logistic and multinomial logistic regression analyses are applied depending on the properties of dependent variables. The results suggest, that there is a clear positive correlation between education level and health. More educated are more likely to report being in very good health. They, on average, spend less time on sick leave and have lower probability of getting into the hospital. Education is strongly associated with smoking and alcohol consumption. Well educated people are less likely to smoke and usually drink alcohol moderately, while for the least educated the reverse is true. The study is subject to data limitations, especially due to question wording used in RLMS. In conclusion, drawbacks of the analysis and possible ways of its improvement are discussed.