The Intergenerational Transmission of Mental and Physical Health in the United Kingdom

Panka Bencsik, Timothy Halliday and Bhashkar Mazumder

No 14126, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We estimate intergenerational health persistence in the United Kingdom using Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY), a broad measure of health derived from the SF-12 Survey. We estimate that both the rank-rank slope and the intergenerational health association (IHA) are 0.21. We use components of the SF-12 to create mental and physical health indices and find that mental health is at least as persistent across generations as physical health. Importantly, parents' mental health is much more strongly associated with children's health than parents' physical health indicating that mental health might be a more important transmission channel. Finally, we construct an overall measure of welfare that combines income and health, and estimate a rank-rank association of 0.31. This is considerably lower than a comparable estimate of 0.43 for the US, suggesting greater mobility of overall welfare in the UK than the US.

Keywords: physical health; mental health; intergenerational health mobility; United Kingdom (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2021-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ltv
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Published - published in:Journal of Health Economics, 2023, 92,102805

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Journal Article: The intergenerational transmission of mental and physical health in the United Kingdom (2023)
Working Paper: The Intergenerational Transmission of Mental and Physical Health in the United Kingdom (2021)
Working Paper: The Intergenerational Transmission of Mental and Physical Health in the United Kingdom (2021)
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