The health returns of education policies from preschool to high school and beyond

This paper examines the role of education as the key propeller of upward mobility and highlights its impact on longer run health. I integrate the analysis of the linkages between educational investment opportunities across the continuum of developmental stages of childhood - including preschool program participation and K-12 school resources - to investigate their long run consequences on adult health outcomes. The study analyzes the health trajectories of children born between 1950 and 1975 followed through 2007 using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and its supplements on early childhood education and health. This analysis uses the longest-running US nationally representative longitudinal data spanning four decades linked with multiple data sources containing detailed neighborhood attributes and school quality resources that prevailed at the time these children were growing up. This paper builds upon and extends two strands of literature. The first analyzes the returns to education policies beyond labor market outcomes. The second concerns the inextricable links between school quality and subsequent upward mobility prospects.