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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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    Cited by:

    1. Hugo Reis & Pedro Carneiro & Alessandro Toppeta, 2024. "Parental Investments and Socio-Economic Gradients in Learning across European Countries," Working Papers w202407, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    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. Graeber, Daniel, 2023. "Intergenerational Health Mobility in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 16567, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    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. Weijuan Wu & Haokai Liao & Xuelin Yang, 2024. "Education disrupts the intergenerational transmission of health disadvantage across three generations in China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(6), pages 1-20, June.
    6. Sari, Emre & Moilanen, Mikko & Lindeboom, Maarten, 2023. "Role of grandparents in risky health behavior transmission: A study on smoking behavior in Norway," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 338(C).
    7. Juergen Jung, 2022. "Estimating transition probabilities between health states using US longitudinal survey data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(2), pages 901-943, August.
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. 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.
    11. Lauren Hoehn-Velasco & Michael F. Pesko & Serena Phillips, 2023. "The Long-Term Impact of in Utero Cigarette Taxes on Adult Prenatal Smoking," American Journal of Health Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(4), pages 605-648.
    12. Orazio Attanasio & Áureo de Paula & Alessandro Toppeta, 2020. "Intergenerational Mobility in Socio-emotional Skills," NBER Working Papers 27823, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Chang, Harrison & Halliday, Timothy J. & Lin, Ming-Jen & Mazumder, Bhashkar, 2024. "Estimating intergenerational health transmission in Taiwan with administrative health records," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 238(C).
    14. Kumar, Santosh & Halliday, Timothy J. & Mazumder, Bhash, 2025. "Cycles of Malnutrition: Intergenerational Health Transmission in India," IZA Discussion Papers 17684, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. 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.
    16. Noghanibehambari, Hamid, 2022. "Intergenerational health effects of Medicaid," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    17. Carsten Andersen, 2021. "Intergenerational health mobility: Evidence from Danish registers," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(12), pages 3186-3202, December.
    18. Jiao Lu & Yang Yang & Yang Gao, 2024. "Research on the Spatial and Temporal Patterns and Formation Mechanisms of Intergenerational Health Mobility in China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 173(3), pages 709-740, July.

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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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