GINI DP 63: Parental Health and Child Schooling!

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the impact of parental health shocks on investment in child education using detailed longitudinal data from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our study controls for individual unobserved heterogeneity by using child fixed effects, and it accounts for potential health misreporting bias by employing several, more objective, health indicators. Our results show that children of ill mothers, but not of ill fathers, are significantly less likely to be enrolled in education at ages 15-24. Moreover, there is some evidence that mothers’ health shocks have more negative consequences on younger children and sons.