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Spillover effects of maternal education on child’s health and health behavior

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  • Daniel Kemptner
  • Jan Marcus

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of maternal education on child’s health and health behavior. We draw on a rich German panel data set containing information about three generations. This allows instrumenting maternal education by the number of her siblings while conditioning on grandparental characteristics. The instrumental variables approach has not yet been used in the intergenerational context and works for the sample sizes of common household panels. We find substantial effects on health behavior for adolescent daughters, but neither for adolescent sons nor for the health status of newborns. We show that possible concerns for the validity of the instrument are unlikely to compromise these results. We discuss mother’s health behavior, assortative mating, household income, and child’s schooling track as possible channels of the estimated effects. Maternal education seems to affect daughter’s smoking behavior through the higher likelihood of the daughter pursuing a higher secondary schooling track. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2013

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  • Daniel Kemptner & Jan Marcus, 2013. "Spillover effects of maternal education on child’s health and health behavior," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 29-52, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:reveho:v:11:y:2013:i:1:p:29-52
    DOI: 10.1007/s11150-012-9161-x
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Everding, Jakob, 2019. "Heterogeneous spillover effects of children's education on parental mental health," hche Research Papers 18, University of Hamburg, Hamburg Center for Health Economics (hche).
    2. Hope Corman & Dhaval Dave & Nancy E. Reichman, 2018. "Evolution of the Infant Health Production Function," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(1), pages 6-47, July.
    3. Mathias Huebener, 2017. "Intergenerational Effects of Education on Risky Health Behaviours and Long-Term Health," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1709, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    4. Joseph Sabia & Daniel Rees, 2015. "Body weight, mental health capital, and academic achievement," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 653-684, September.
    5. Mathias Huebener, 2019. "Life Expectancy and Parental Education in Germany," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1023, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    6. Huebener, Mathias, 2019. "Life expectancy and parental education," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 232, pages 351-365.
    7. Huebener, Mathias, 2019. "Life expectancy and parental education," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 232(C), pages 351-365.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intergenerational mobility; Health; Health behavior; Instrumental variables; C26; I12; J62;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C26 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Instrumental Variables (IV) Estimation
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies

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