A Gender Perspective On The Mediating Mechanisms Between Education And Health

With the rapid development of my country’s economy and society,the basic needs of the people are effectively guaranteed,and health is increasingly becoming one of the pursuit goals of people yearning for a better and happy life.Human health is not only affected by genetic factors and medical factors,but also the influence of social factors on health cannot be ignored.As an important social issue in modern society,the phenomenon of health inequality has always attracted the attention of academic circles.A large number of studies have revealed that differences in socioeconomic status are the fundamental influencing factors that exacerbate health inequality,and the educational indicators that measure socioeconomic status play a fundamental role.Therefore,the relationship between health and education has received more and more attention.Taking into account the special historical and cultural background of our country and the social phenomenon of “gender paradox”(gender inequality),men and women are quite different in terms of physiological basis and social resources.Women’s educational opportunities are restricted by their family backgrounds,leading to Their education level is generally low.Based on the literature review of the health returns of education,this paper constructs the mediation effect model with the help of budget constraint theory and efficiency improvement theory.Through the analysis of the 2010 China Comprehensive Social Survey data,the OLS model is used to test whether education is achieved through socioeconomic status(income,self-assessment class),cognitive resources(self-control ability),and lifestyle(physical exercise,social interaction,nutritional acquisition).Three important intermediary factors affect the individual’s health returns,focusing on the health effects of educational achievements and gender differences in internal mechanisms.In addition,an ordered logic model was used to test the robustness of the relevant results.The empirical results show that: First,education has a significant effect on health in general,that is,the higher the education level,the better the self-assessed health,especially in the compulsory education stage,the health effect of education is the strongest;Second,although my country also has the phenomenon of "gender paradox",educational achievement produces more health returns to women,which is beneficial to women to maintain their own health quality and reduce the health gap between men and women,especially women who have obtained higher education.Therefore,the theory of resource substitution provides a certain explanatory power,rather than strengthening advantages.Because among those with higher education levels,there is no evidence that the dominant group is healthier.Third,through the intermediary mechanism model,compare the relative importance of the three intermediary influencing factors of socioeconomic status,cognitive resources and lifestyle in different gender samples.For men,education is mainly through the improvement of economic status and living habits to obtain more health returns;for women,the health returns of education are more realized by achieving economic independence and improving cognitive ability.This paper conducts a robustness test by replacing the model,and the empirical results are still significant.