We explore the impact of the international epidemiological transition on educational attainment of males and females over the second half of the twentieth century. Using an instrumental variables strategy that exploits pre-existing variation in mortality rates across infectious diseases and gender differences in the responsiveness to the method of disease control, we document that health improvements associated with the transition led to larger gains in life expectancy for females due to their stronger immune response to vaccination. These relative gains were associated with greater increases in the educational attainment of females compared to males and account for a large share of the reduction in the education gender gap that took place over this period.

中文翻译：

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国际流行病学转变与教育性别差距

我们探讨了国际流行病学转变对二十世纪下半叶男性和女性受教育程度的影响。使用一种工具变量策略，该方法利用了各种传染病死亡率的预先存在的变化以及对疾病控制方法的反应中的性别差异，我们证明与过渡有关的健康改善导致女性预期寿命的增加，原因是它们对疫苗的免疫反应更强。与男性相比，这些相对的增长与女性的受教育程度的增加有很大关系，并且在这段时期内，教育性别差距的减少中很大一部分。