Health Economics of Genetic Distance

Pavel Jelnov

Economics Bulletin, 2020, vol. 40, issue 3, 1970-1976

Abstract: In this note, I address the trade-off between children's health and parental preference toward similarity with children. In my model, better-off individuals mate genetically close partners and then use wealth to treat their children's health problems, caused by inbreeding depression. As a result, the relationship between parental wealth and children's health includes decreasing portions. Siblings health inequality is also non-monotonically related to parental wealth, if parents discriminate in favor of more similar children.

Keywords: inbreeding; genetic distance; health inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 N3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-08-08
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