Disentangling potential causal effects of educational duration on well-being, and mental and physical health outcomes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Extensive research has focused on the potential benefits of education on various mental and physical health outcomes. However, whether the associations reflect a causal effect is harder to establish.

Methods

To examine associations between educational duration and specific aspects of well-being, anxiety and mood disorders, and cardiovascular health in a sample of European Ancestry UK Biobank participants born in England and Wales, we apply four different causal inference methods (a natural policy experiment leveraging the minimum school-leaving age, a sibling-control design, Mendelian randomization [MR], and within-family MR), and assess if the methods converge on the same conclusion.

Results

A comparison of results across the four methods reveals that asso

SUBMITTER: van de Weijer MP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12007414 | biostudies-literature | 2024 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature