In 1980, a few years after its democratization process, Spain raised the minimum working age from 14 to 16, while the compulsory education age remained at 14. This reform changed the within-cohort incentives to remain in the educational system. We use a difference-in-differences approach, where our treated and control individuals only differ in their month of birth, to analyze the gender asymmetries in mortality generated by this change. The reform decreased mortality at ages 14–29 among men by 6.4% and women by 8.9%, mainly from a reduction in deaths due to traffic accidents. However, the reform also increased mortality for women ages 30–45 by 7%. This is driven by increases in HIV mortality, as well as by diseases related to the nervous and circulatory systems. We show that women’s health habits deteriorated as a consequence of the reform, while this was not the case for men. The gender differences in the impact of the reform on smoking and drinking should be understood in the context of the gender equalization process that affected women were experiencing when the reform took place. All in all, these patterns help explain the narrowing age gap in life expectancy between women and men in many developed countries while, at the same time, they provide important policy implications for middle-income countries that are undergoing those gender equalization processes right now.

1980 年，即民主化进程几年后，西班牙将最低工作年龄从 14 岁提高到 16 岁，而义务教育年龄仍保持在 14 岁。这项改革改变了继续留在教育体系中的队列内激励措施。我们使用差异中的差异方法，其中我们的治疗和对照个体仅在出生月份有所不同，以分析由这种变化产生的死亡率的性别不对称。改革将 14-29 岁男性的死亡率降低了 6.4%，女性降低了 8.9%，主要是由于交通事故死亡人数的减少。然而，改革也将 30-45 岁女性的死亡率提高了 7%。这是由艾滋病毒死亡率增加以及与神经和循环系统相关的疾病造成的。我们表明妇女的健康习惯因改革而恶化，而男性的情况并非如此。改革对吸烟和饮酒影响的性别差异应该在改革发生时影响妇女所经历的性别平等进程的背景下加以理解。总而言之，这些模式有助于解释许多发达国家男女预期寿命的年龄差距正在缩小，同时，它们为目前正在经历性别平等进程的中等收入国家提供了重要的政策影响。