Longevity and Human Capital Investments: Evidence from Declines in Maternal Mortality

Joint with: Seema Jayachandran

Many economists argue that high mortality is a major restraint on human capital accumulation and, in turn, growth. A short time horizon makes a person less likely to

invest. Therefore, having a lower life expectancy reduces the incentive to obtain schooling. However, there is controversy over whether this theoretical effect is empirically important. There is good evidence that improvements in health make children more capable of

obtaining schooling, but previous research has been less able to estimate whether health improvements encourage human capital accumulation via life-expectancy effects. This paper uses a type of mortality that lends itself to isolating life-expectancy effects. We examine maternal mortality declines in Sri Lanka between 1946 and 1963. Maternal mortality was a major killer of prime-age women and was a common and visible risk. Its elimination (driven by improvements in availability of health care and transportation to hospitals at the time of delivery) resulted in large increases in the life expectancy of

women relative to men in a very short period of time. We use variation across districts, over time and by gender to identify the effects of longevity on education and other

outcomes. We find that the 80% reduction in maternal mortality risk increased female adult life expectancy by 1.7 years (a 5% increase), and increased female literacy by 5%. Lower maternal mortality risk also appears to have increased the birth rate.

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