Gradients of the Intergenerational Transmission of Health in Developing Countries

Sonia Bhalotra and Samantha Rawlings

No 4353, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper investigates the sensitivity of the intergenerational transmission of health to exogenous changes in income, education and public health, changes that are often delivered by economic growth. It uses individual survey data on 2.24 million children born to 600000 mothers during 1970-2000 in 38 developing countries. These data are merged with macroeconomic data by country and birth cohort to create an unprecedentedly large sample of comparable data that exhibit massive variation in maternal and child health as well as in aggregate economic conditions. The country-level panel is exploited to control for aggregate shocks and trends in unobservables within countries, while a panel of children within mother is exploited to control for family-specific endowments and neighbourhood characteristics. Child health is indicated by infant survival and maternal health by (relative) height. We find that improvements in maternal education, income and public health provision that occur in the year of birth and the year before birth limit the degree to which child health is tied to family circumstance. The interaction (gradient) effects are, in general, most marked for shorter women suggesting that children are more likely to bear the penalty exerted by poor maternal health if they are conceived or born in adverse socio-economic conditions.

Keywords: growth; public health; education; intergenerational transmission; early life conditions; health; infant mortality; height; environment; gene; in utero; income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2009-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published - published in: Review of Economics and Statistics, 2013, 95 (2), 660 - 672

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Related works:
Journal Article: Gradients of the Intergenerational Transmission of Health in Developing Countries (2013)
Working Paper: Gradients of the Intergenerational Transmission of Health in Developing Countries (2009)
Working Paper: Gradients of the Intergenerational Transmission of Health in Developing Countries (2009)
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