Minimum Working Age and the Gender Mortality Gap

Abstract

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 (...)