Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital: Is It a One-Way Street?

Petter Lundborg and Kaveh Majlesi

No 9280, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Studies on the intergenerational transmission of human capital usually assume a one-way spillover from parents to children. But what if children 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 causal estimates tell a different story; children's schooling has no significant effect on parents' survival. These results hold when we examine separate causes of death and when we restrict the sample to low-income and low-educated parents.

Keywords: mortality; human capital; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2015-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-ger and nep-hrm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published - published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2018, 57, 206 - 220

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Related works:
Journal Article: Intergenerational transmission of human capital: Is it a one-way street? (2018)
Working Paper: Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital: Is It a One-Way Street? (2015)
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