The long-lasting effects of family background: A European cross-country comparison

Fabrizio Mazzonna

No 11245, MEA discussion paper series from Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy

Abstract: This paper investigates how and to what extent disparities in family socio-economic status (SES) during childhood have long-lasting effects on old-age health, income and cognition. Further, it examines the variability of these effects across 13 European countries using the Survey on Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and SHARELIFE that collect retrospective information on respondents’ family backgrounds during their childhoods. The results confirm the crucial role of family SES during childhood in determining old-age outcomes and show large cross-country variability. Education seems to be the main channel for this gradient and explains most of the estimated cross-country differences. We argue that such a result can be explained with the different efforts of the European countries in promoting full time education.

JEL-codes: I28 J14 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-09-14
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://mea.mpisoc.mpg.de/uploads/user_mea_discussionpapers/1250_245-11.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The long-lasting effects of family background: A European cross-country comparison (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mea:meawpa:11245

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MEA discussion paper series from Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, Amalienstraße 33, 80799 München, Germany.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Henning Frankenberger ().