The Returns to Parental Health: Evidence from Indonesia

Dara Lee Luca () and David E. Bloom ()
Additional contact information
Dara Lee Luca: Mathematica Policy Research
David E. Bloom: Harvard School of Public Health

No 11987, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper investigates the economic returns to parental health. To account for potential endogeneity between parental health and child outcomes, we leverage longitudinal microdata from Indonesia to estimate individual fixed effects models. Our results show that the economic returns to parental health are high. We show that maternal health not only significantly affects her children's health, but is also intrinsically linked to her spouse's labor market status and earnings. Paternal health appears to be more linked to child schooling outcomes, especially for girls. When both parents are in poor health, the negative effects on their children are compounded. Additionally, the consequences of poor parental health are enduring. Longer-run effects of poor parental health manifest in a lower likelihood of high school completion, fewer years of schooling, and poorer adult health.

Keywords: parental health; spousal health; child health; education; family economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 J13 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-hea, nep-lab and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp11987.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11987

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().