Selection and Causation in the Parental Education Gradient in Health: Lessons from a Large Sample of Adoptees

Evelina Björkegren (), Mikael Lindahl, Mårten Palme and Emilia Simeonova

No 28214, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We use data from a large sample of adoptees born in Sweden to study to what extent the well-established association between parental educational attainments and adult health of the child generation can be attributed to pre- or post-birth factors, respectively. We find a significant association between the educational attainment of the adopting parents and child health outcomes as adults. These results suggest that growing up in a better-educated household has long-term effects on health outcomes. Our analysis of the mechanisms behind the results suggests that formation of human capital, and in particular cognitive and non-cognitive skills, may be important.

JEL-codes: I1 I12 I14 I26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-eur, nep-hea and nep-neu
Note: CH EH LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28214.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:nbr:nberwo:28214

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28214

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().