The education policy seminar series will take place on the 2nd Thursday of each month at 8:00 AM US Pacific Time / 11:00 AM US Eastern Time / 5:00 PM Central European Time.

The Gateway to Global Aging Data is organizing a monthly virtual seminar series on education policy. The series is led by Dave Knapp (University of Southern California) and Mauricio Avendano (University of Lausanne). The goal of the series is to foster conversations and exchange ideas between the Gateway education team, its collaborators, and outside researchers working in this growing field. Presentations will typically feature in-progress work, and active discussion is encouraged.

Participants must register to receive seminar announcements and meeting links. To register, please submit the form with your email here. Emails will be limited to seminar announcements, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

Upcoming Presentations

April 9, 2026
Léa Cimelli, French Institute for Demographic Studies
Title: The impact of reducing early school tracking on health in mid-life
Abstract: We use the exogenous variation in school tracking induced by the implementation of a national educational reform in France in 1977 to study the mean and heterogeneous effects of education on health in midlife. Regression Discontinuity (RD) estimates based on the CONSTANCES cohort suggest that on average, beneficiaries of the reform had lower BMI in midlife and lower probability of being overweight. No effect appears on the probability to be obese. These findings add to the limited evidence on the health effects of reforms targeting the quality of schooling and highlight that looking beyond average effects might better inform how policies can be targeted to enhance their benefits.

May 14, 2026
Stella Tsoli, London School of Economics and Political Science
Title: The long-term effects of expanding access to secondary education on biological ageing
Abstract: We examine the causal impact of expanding access to secondary education on biological ageing in Ireland. Using data from the Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing (TILDA), we exploit the exogenous variation in access to secondary education induced by the 1967 “Free Education Scheme” that eliminated fees for secondary education. Using a fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD), we assess the impact of the reform on four validated measures of biological ageing: Biological Risk Score (BRS), Klemera-Doubal Method (KDM), PhenoAge and Homeostatic Dysregulation (HD). While we find that eligibility for the reform increased average years of schooling only among participants from disadvantaged families, we observe no effect on participants’ biological ageing profiles overall. Taken together, these results indicate that the reform did not translate into improvements in the overall biological ageing even decades after its implementation.

Thank you to those who have already presented:

January 8, 2026
Clémence Kieny, University of Lausanne Unisanté
Title: The Long-Run Impact of Primary Education on Women’s Late-Life Cognitive Function in India

March 12, 2026
Ariane Bertogg, University of Konstanz
Title: Unequal Impacts of Societal Transformation? Germany’s Division and Reunification and Gender and Educational Gradients in Later Life Cognitive Health