The Parental Co-Immunization Hypothesis

Miguel Portela () and Paul Schweinzer

Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: We attempt to answer a simple empirical question: does having children make a parent live longer? The hypothesis we offer is that a parent's immune system is refreshed by a child's infections at a time when their own protection starts wearing thin. With the boosted immune system, the parent has a better chance to fend off whatever infections might strike when old and weak. Thus, parenthood is rewarded in individual terms. Using the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS-LS) data set following one percent of the population of England and Wales along four census waves 1971, 1981, 1991, and 2001, we are unable to reject this hypothesis. By contrast, we find in our key result that women with children have a roughly 8% higher survival probability of infections than women without children.

Keywords: Longevity; Infectious diseases; Family (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 J1 R2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.york.ac.uk/media/economics/documents/discussionpapers/2013/1327.pdf Main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Parental Co-Immunization Hypothesis (2013)
Working Paper: The Parental Co-Immunization Hypothesis (2013)
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:yor:yorken:13/27

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of York Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Paul Hodgson ().