IN BRIEF
The reform increased college completion by about 13 percentage points in affected cohorts.
Instrumental-variable estimates indicate 20% lower parental mortality among children whose completion was induced by the reform.
More financial support and contact, less smoking and more activity explain only part of the result.
WHY IT MATTERS
Returns to education may spill upward within families, not only to the person who studies.
If the result survives review and replication, evaluations of education policy may need to include intergenerational health spillovers.
WHAT IS NOW POSSIBLE
Before: upward intergenerational health effects were difficult to separate from family background. Now: the Korean reform supplies an instrumental-variable estimate consistent with a substantial parental mortality effect.
WHAT MADE IT POSSIBLE
Korea's 1993 reform created externally driven variation in college completion.
Longitudinal aging data allowed researchers to observe parental mortality and behavior.
THE STORY
A large expansion of higher education in South Korea offers an unusual way to ask whether a child's education can affect even a parent's survival.
The authors estimate that the 1993 reform increased college completion by 13 percentage points among eldest children in affected cohorts. Using that variation as an instrument, they estimate a 20% reduction in parental mortality for children whose college completion was induced by the reform.
The direction is consistent with reduced-form estimates showing 27% lower mortality among parents whose eldest child belonged to reform-affected cohorts.
Parents received more financial support and contact from their children and showed less smoking and more physical activity, but those channels explain only a small share of the estimated effect.
This is a working paper, not a randomized trial or a peer-reviewed journal article. The result depends on the quasi-experimental assumptions and needs replication in other education and health systems.
WHAT WE KNOW
The reform substantially increased college completion in exposed cohorts. [1][2]
IV estimates are consistent with a large reduction in parental mortality.
The result comes from longitudinal South Korean data.
WHAT WE DON'T KNOW
How well the result generalizes beyond South Korea.
Which mechanism explains most of the estimated effect.
Whether the estimate will remain stable after peer review and independent replication.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
Peer review and replication should test the design assumptions.
Studies in other countries and education systems are needed.
Further work can separate financial, social and behavioral mechanisms.
SOURCE TRACE
Korea's 1993 Higher Education Reform increased college completion by an estimated 13 percentage points among eldest children in the affected cohorts.
Instrumental-variable estimates indicate a 20% reduction in parental mortality for children whose college completion was induced by the reform, with a reported standard error of 7%.
Parents of reform-induced college completers received more financial support and contact and showed lower smoking and higher physical activity, but these factors explained only a small share of the estimated benefit.
SOURCES
- Impact of Adults’ College Completion on their Parents’ Mortality: Evidence from the 1993 Korean Higher Education ReformOpen source
- Impact of Adults’ College Completion on their Parents’ Mortality: Evidence from the 1993 Korean Higher Education ReformOpen source
CURRENT EVIDENCE
EARLY EVIDENCE
POPULATION / QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL
WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS?
- A replication that fails to reproduce the effect.
- Evidence that the instrumental-variable assumptions do not hold.
- Peer review that materially revises the estimates.