Matt Dickson

100 Questions: identifying research priorities for poverty prevention and reduction

Reducing poverty is important for those affected, for society and the economy. Poverty remains entrenched in the UK, despite considerable research efforts to understand its causes and possible solutions. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, with the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge, ran a democratic, transparent, consensual exercise involving 45 participants from government, non-governmental organisations, academia and research to identify 100 important research questions that, if answered, would help to reduce or prevent poverty. The list includes questions across a number of important themes, including attitudes, education, family, employment, heath, wellbeing, inclusion, markets, housing, taxes, inequality and power.

The causal effects of education on health outcomes in the UK Biobank

Educated people are generally healthier, have fewer comorbidities and live longer than people with less education1–3. Much of the evidence about the effects of education comes from observational studies, which can be affected by residual confounding. Natural experiments, such as laws that increase the minimum school leaving age, are a potentially more robust source of evidence about the causal effects of education. Previous studies have exploited this natural experiment using population-level administrative data to investigate mortality, and surveys to investigate the effect on morbidity1, 2,4. Here, we add to the evidence using data from a large sample from the UK Biobank5. We exploit the raising of the minimum school leaving age in the UK in September 1972 as a natural experiment6. We used a regression discontinuity design to investigate the causal effects of remaining in school. We found consistent evidence that remaining in school causally reduced the risk of diabetes and mortality in all specifications.The authors exploit a 1972 policy that increased the minimum school leaving age to investigate the causal effects of staying in school on health. Using a large dataset, they find that remaining in school reduces the risk of diabetes and mortality.

The effect of education on adult mortality, health, and income: triangulating across genetic and policy reforms

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.

A Note on the Wage Effects of the 1972 Raising of the School Leaving Age in Scotland and Northern Ireland

In this note, we use the UK Labour Force Survey to estimate the wage return to an additional year of schooling for Scotland and Northern Ireland exploiting the 1972 Raising of the School Leaving Age (RoSLA). Prior literature on this topic has consistently ignored both countries in a UK context, likely due to an incorrect belief that they were not affected by the 1972 RoSLA until some years later. We demonstrate that both countries were affected by the education reform in 1972 and our estimates suggest a positive effect on hourly wages for Scotland.