Pros

Compulsory schooling reforms provide opportunities to measure the causal links between education and health outcomes such as reduced mortality and morbidity.

Some studies suggest that schooling reforms have provided additional health benefits in some cases.

Early research using country-level variation in the introduction of compulsory schooling laws shows a causal effect from education to health, possibly arising from delaying engagement in hard physical labor.

There is evidence of an effect of compulsory schooling reforms on cognitive functioning, which may be reflected in reduced incidence of dementia.