Is Education Better for Health than Health Insurance?
This is Dana P. Goldman and Darius N. Lakdawalla, writing in The Economists’ Voice:
We should take the $120 billion it might cost for universal coverage, and use it, instead, to provide earlier education and to improve the quality of education. Better-educated people live longer, are less likely to be disabled, and engage in healthier behavior. For nearly 40 years, distinguished health economists led by Michael Grossman have observed that more-educated people have much more powerful incentives to protect their own ‘investments’ in education by practicing healthier habits and reducing their risks of death. They also are better at self-managing chronic diseases. And, unlike universal coverage, more education has other valuable benefits to a person and to society. Less crime, less divorce, and higher earnings—can universal health insurance promise that?
Education can’t hurt. Ask Stephen Hawking.
As the article asserts, education is associated with higher income. Education and income are both highly correlated with heath status. Despite these well-known facts, I’m not entirely convinced that boosting education spending would necessarily have a major impact on public health. There is little correlation between educational attainment and spending on education. Moreover, boosting educational spending would not necessarily cause everyone to excel academically and actually using the available knowledge to better their health.
How about we just let the people who earned the $120 billion keep it?
There is pretty much zero evidence that higher spending will improve educational outcomes, and quite a bit suggesting that it will make them worse.
The answer to your question is “probably.”
I think the answer to the question is “yes.”