From the Becker-Posner Blog:
Nor is this all. Research increasingly demonstrates that education improves performance in virtually every aspect of life. Educated persons on the whole are healthier, are better at investing in their children, have more stable marriages, smoke much less and in general have much better habits, commit many fewer violent crimes, are better at managing their financial resources, and at adjusting to unexpected shocks, such as hurricane Katrina. It might be thought that these correlations between education and various benefits, including earnings and health but not only these, are the result of abler persons, such as those with higher IQ’s, and healthier persons getting more schooling rather than the effects of schooling. More able and healthy persons do have greater amounts of schooling, but literally hundreds of studies have tried to correct for these differences. They find that even after making these and other corrections, the effects of education on various monetary and non-monetary benefits remain very large.
An additional finding is also important. Not only have the earnings benefits of education increased during the past 30 years, but so too have health benefits, the advantages of education in raising children, and the benefits of education in managing one’s assets. The growing gains from education are pervasive and not limited to earnings, or to economic benefits narrowly conceived. This suggests that the forces producing the greater advantages are also broad and general rather than narrow and specific.