The Causal Effect of Education on the Body Mass: Evidence from Europe

We adopt a multi-country setup to show that years of schooling have a causal protective effect on the BMI of females living in nine European countries. No such effect is found for males. The protective effect for European females is not negligible but smaller than the one recently found for the US, and stronger among overweight females. We discuss possible mechanisms justifying both the protective role of education and the gender difference in this role. We argue that the effects of additional schooling on income, the probability of employment and the frequency of vigorous physical activities, both on and off the job, may help explaining our results.