 Intergenerational transmission of human capital: Is it a one-way street?Petter Lundborg and Kaveh Majlesi Journal of Health Economics, 2018, vol. 57, issue C, 206-220 Abstract: Studies on the intergenerational transmission of human capital usually assume a one-way spillover from parents to children. However, children may also affect their parents’ human capital. Using exogenous variation in education, arising from a Swedish compulsory schooling reform in the 1950s and 1960s, we address this question by studying the causal effect of children's schooling on their parents’ longevity. We first replicate previous findings of a positive and significant cross-sectional relationship between children's education and their parents’ longevity. Our instrumental variables estimates are not statistically different from zero. However, they hide substantial heterogeneity by the gender of the child and the parent; female schooling is found to affect longevity of fathers and especially those from low socio-economic background. Taken together, our results point to the importance of daughters’ schooling for parental health and to the importance of considering heterogeneous impacts. Keywords: Intergenerational transmission; Education; Mortality; Health; Mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:57:y:2018:i:c:p:206-220 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.12.001 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier |
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