Childlessness and health in middle age and older adulthood: evidence from Singapore

Christine Ho, Dahye Kim, Rohan Ray and Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Health and well-being in mature adulthood are important concerns given the prevalence of individuals aging without children. We exploit two new instruments for childlessness—infertility and the number of childless siblings—and condition our analyses on a rich set of covariates including childhood health and financial status, to investigate the causal relationship between childlessness and health in middle age and older adulthood. Using a nationwide dataset of 1500 Singaporeans aged 50 and above, we show that OLS underestimates the negative effects of childlessness on health. We find that childlessness leads to higher likelihood of poorer self-reported health and mental distress. The results are robust to a battery of sensitivity analyses, including bounding the effects by relaxing the exclusion restrictions.

Keywords: health and well-being; childlessness; instrumental variable; bounds; aging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I31 J13 J14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2026-04-30
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Published in European Economic Review, 30, April, 2026, 184. ISSN: 0014-2921

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