Does more education improve mental health for ethnic minorities in the UK? : The impact of ROSLA 1972

Herrera, F. and Migali, G. and Mateus, C. (2026) Does more education improve mental health for ethnic minorities in the UK? : The impact of ROSLA 1972. SSM - Mental Health, 9: 100614. ISSN 2666-5603

Abstract

Can educational expansion improve mental health amongst ethnic minorities? Despite extensive research on education-health relationships, causal evidence for mental health outcomes within ethnic minority communities remains scarce. We examine the 1972 Raising of School Leaving Age (ROSLA) policy, which extended mandatory schooling by one year for individuals born on or after September 1, 1957. This natural experiment provides exogenous variation in education amongst ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom. We apply a regression discontinuity design with local randomisation to data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, focusing on ethnic minorities enrolled in UK education during the policy implementation period. We measure mental health using the SF-12 Mental Component Summary and General Health Questionnaire. Our fuzzy regression discontinuity approach accounts for imperfect compliance whilst maximising statistical power in this minority population. The reform successfully increased educational participation amongst ethnic minorities, raising the school-leaving age by approximately 1 year. However, this did not translate into improved long-term mental health outcomes. Whilst correlational analyses show positive associations between educational attainment and mental health, these relationships disappear in our causal framework. We find no statistically significant effects across model specifications and both mental health measures. However, limited statistical power—inherent when studying minority populations with natural experiments—means we cannot rule out meaningful effects in either direction. Our study provides the first causal estimates for compulsory schooling effects on mental health within UK ethnic minority communities. Whilst null findings do not definitively establish absence of effects, they suggest caution about assuming educational reforms will deliver mental health benefits for populations facing structural barriers within education systems.