The intergenerational inequality of health in China

Tor Eriksson, Jay Pan and Xuezheng Qin ()

China Economic Review, 2014, vol. 31, issue C, 392-409

Abstract: This paper estimates the intergenerational health transmission in China using the 1991–2009 China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data. Three decades of persistent economic growth in China has been accompanied by high income inequality, which may in turn be caused by the inequality of opportunity in education and health. In this paper, we find that there is a strong correlation of health status between parent and their offspring in both the urban and rural sectors, suggesting the existence of intergenerational health inequality in China. The correlation is robust to various model specifications, including the control of unobserved household heterogeneity using instrumental variables. We also find that parents' socio-economic characteristics and environmental choices are strongly correlated with their own and their children's health, supporting the “nature–nurture interaction” hypothesis. The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition further indicates that 15% to 27% of the rural–urban inequality of child health is attributable to the endowed inequality from their parents' health. An important policy implication of our study is that the increasing inequality of income and opportunity in China can be ameliorated through the improvement of the current generation's health status and living standards.

Keywords: Intergenerational transmission; Health; Inequality; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Working Paper: The Intergenerational Inequality of Health in China (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:31:y:2014:i:c:p:392-409

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2014.06.005

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