Disentangling the effect of education on emergency department utilization

Since Grossman’s seminal paper in 1972, there have been a number of studies concerning the effect of education on health and health care demand. Though several studies have distinguished between preventive and curative care, no study has investigated the effects of general education on the utilization of unnecessary emergency department use. We test whether general education reduces “potentially unnecessary” emergency department utilization and provide a measure of the resulting private benefits associated with increased education. Our results partially confirm our hypothesis regarding “potentially unnecessary” emergency department use. We find that moving from a high school to greater than high school education appears to reduce “potentially unnecessary” emergency department use, with the impact being greater among the insured. However, though reducing the education level from high school to less than high school increases “potentially unnecessary” emergency department use among the insured as predicted, it has the opposite impact on the uninsured.