We explore the impact of the international epidemiological transition on educational outcomes of males and females over the second half of the 20th century. We provide clear evidence that the large declines in mortality rates from infectious diseases that followed the transition gave rise to di¤erential life expectancy gains across genders, with females bene-…ting more due to their greater responsiveness to vaccination. We also document that these gender di¤erences in life expectancy gains were subsequently re‡ected in similar di¤erential increases in educational outcomes for males and females. Using an instrumental variables strategy that exploits pre-intervention variation in mortality rates across di¤erent infectious diseases, we con…rm the causal nature of these e¤ects and show that the magnitude of the e¤ects account for a large share of the reduction in the education gender gap that emerged over this period.