The Relationship between Education and Mental Health: New Evidence from a Discordant Twin Study

• In Event: 277 - Regular Session. Advancing Research on Mental Health Disparities

Abstract

Higher educational attainment is strongly associated with better mental health in adulthood. Explanations for this relationship are often framed in causal terms: higher levels of education are thought to generate additional economic resources, fewer chronic stressors, healthier lifestyles, more social support, and, ultimately, better mental health. An alternative explanation—the social selection hypothesis—suggests that schooling is a proxy for unobserved endowments that confound the relationship between education and mental health. In this article, we seek to adjudicate between these possibilities using a large, U.S.-based sample of identical adult twins. By relating within-twin-pair differences in education to within-twin-pair differences in mental health, we are able to control for the influence of genetic traits and shared family characteristics that may otherwise bias the estimates associated with educational attainment. Results from these analyses suggest that the observed association between education and mental health is entirely attributable to confounding on unobserved variables. This finding holds across mental health conditions and is robust to a variety of sensitivity checks. Implications for the study of educational gradients in mental health are discussed.

Authors

• Andrew Halpern-Manners, Indiana University

• Landon Schnabel, Indiana University-Bloomington

• Elaine Marie Hernandez, Indiana University

• Judy L Silberg, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Lindon J. Eaves, Virginia Commonwealth University