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The Intergenerational Transmission of Health in the United States: A Latent Variables Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Ashley Wong

    (Northwestern University)

  • Bhashkar Mazumder

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago)

  • Timothy J Halliday

    (University of Hawaii at Manoa)

Abstract

Social scientists have long documented that many components of socioeconomic status such as income and education have strong ties across generations. However, health status, arguably a more critical component of welfare, has largely been ignored. We fill this void by providing the first estimates of the Intergenerational Health Association (IHA) that are explicitly based on a non-linear latent variable model. Adjusting for only age and gender, we estimate an IHA of 0.3 indicating that about one third of a parent's health status gets transmitted to their children. Once we add additional mediators to the model, we show that education, and particularly children's education, is an important transmission channel in that it reduces the IHA by one third. Finally, we show that estimates of the IHA from non-linear models are only moderately higher than those from linear models, while rank-based mobility estimates are identical.

Suggested Citation

  • Ashley Wong & Bhashkar Mazumder & Timothy J Halliday, 2019. "The Intergenerational Transmission of Health in the United States: A Latent Variables Analysis," Working Papers 201903, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hai:wpaper:201903
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Carneiro, Pedro & Reis, Hugo & Toppeta, Alessandro, 2024. "Parental Investments and Socio-Economic Gradients in Learning across European Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 16785, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Bencsik, Panka & Halliday, Timothy J. & Mazumder, Bhashkar, 2023. "The intergenerational transmission of mental and physical health in the United Kingdom," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    3. Daniel Graeber, 2023. "Intergenerational Health Mobility in Germany," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1195, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    4. Halliday, Timothy & Mazumder, Bhashkar & Wong, Ashley, 2021. "Intergenerational mobility in self-reported health status in the US," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    5. Juergen Jung, 2022. "Estimating transition probabilities between health states using US longitudinal survey data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(2), pages 901-943, August.
    6. de Paula, Aureo & Attanasio, Orazio & Toppeta, Alessandro, 2020. "The Persistence of Socio-Emotional Skills Life Cycle and Intergenerational Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 15254, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Jason Fletcher & Katie M. Jajtner, 2021. "Intergenerational health mobility: Magnitudes and Importance of Schools and Place," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1648-1667, July.
    8. Michele Bavaro & Federico Tullio, 2023. "Intergenerational mobility measurement with latent transition matrices," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 21(1), pages 25-45, March.
    9. Graeber, Daniel, 2023. "Intergenerational Health Mobility in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 16567, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Hoehn-Velasco, Lauren & Pesko, Michael & Phillips, Serena, 2022. "The Long-Term Impact of In-Utero Cigarette Taxes on Adult Prenatal Smoking," IZA Discussion Papers 15656, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Chang, Harrison & Halliday, Timothy J. & Lin, Ming-Jen & Mazumder, Bhashkar, 2023. "Estimating Intergenerational Health Transmission in Taiwan with Administrative Health Records," IZA Discussion Papers 16543, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Mikkel Høst Gandil, 2023. "Rank-correlations are not robust to differences in group inequality," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 21(1), pages 201-217, March.
    13. Noghanibehambari, Hamid, 2022. "Intergenerational health effects of Medicaid," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    14. Carsten Andersen, 2021. "Intergenerational health mobility: Evidence from Danish registers," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(12), pages 3186-3202, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Health; Mobility; Latent Variable; Inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality

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