IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp16280.html

(Breaking) Intergenerational Transmission of Mental Health

Author

Listed:
  • Bütikofer, Aline

    (Norwegian School of Economics)

  • Ginja, Rita

    (University of Bergen)

  • Karbownik, Krzysztof

    (Emory University)

  • Landaud, Fanny

    (CREST)

Abstract

We estimate health associations across generations and dynasties using information on healthcare visits from administrative data for the entire Norwegian population. A parental mental health diagnosis is associated with a 9.3 percentage point (40%) higher probability of a mental health diagnosis of their adolescent child. Intensive margin physical and mental health associations are similar, and dynastic estimates account for about 40% of the intergenerational persistence. We also show that a policy targeting additional health resources for the young children of adults diagnosed with mental health conditions reduced the parent-child mental health association by about 40%.

Suggested Citation

  • Bütikofer, Aline & Ginja, Rita & Karbownik, Krzysztof & Landaud, Fanny, 2023. "(Breaking) Intergenerational Transmission of Mental Health," IZA Discussion Papers 16280, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16280
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp16280.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sarah Cattan & Christine Farquharson & Sonya Krutikova & Andrew McKendrick & Almudena Sevilla, 2023. "Parental labour market instability and children's mental health during the pandemic," IFS Working Papers W23/21, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    2. Attanasio, Orazio P. & de Paula, Áureo & Toppeta, Alessandro, 2025. "Intergenerational mobility in socio-emotional skills," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 248(C).
    3. Sua Kang & Wookun Kim & Kanghyock Koh, 2025. "Childbirth, Baby Bonus, and Maternal Mental Health," CESifo Working Paper Series 11986, CESifo.
    4. Yue, Ai & Song, Qiannan & Gao, Yuan & Liang, Shibin & Zhang, Xinyue & Zhang, Yali & Ding, Yuxiu & Shi, Yaojiang, 2024. "Effect of parenting centers on caregiver mental health ——Evidence from a large scale randomized controlled trial in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    5. Gabriella Conti & Sören Kliem & Malte Sandner, 2024. "Early Home Visiting Delivery Model and Maternal and Child Mental Health at Primary School Age," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 114, pages 401-406, May.
    6. Jajtner, Katie & Wang, Yang, 2025. "The effects of earned income tax credits on intergenerational health mobility in the United States," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    7. Justine Herve & Subha Mani & Jere Behrman & Ramanan Laxminarayan & Arindam Nandi, 2025. "Intergenerational Mobility in Depression and Anxiety in India," PIER Working Paper Archive 25-001, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    8. Kumar Gautam, Santosh & Halliday, Timothy J. & Mazumder, Bhash, 2025. "Cycles of Malnutrition: Intergenerational Health Transmission in India," IZA Discussion Papers 17684, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Ramalingam Shanmugam & Karan P. Singh, 2025. "A New Measure for an Acceptable Level of Homogeneity in Meta-Informatics," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-17, April.
    10. Angela Cools & Jared Grooms & Krzysztof Karbownik & Siobhan M. O'Keefe & Joseph Price & Anthony Wray, 2024. "Birth Order in the Very Long-Run: Estimating Firstborn Premiums between 1850 and 1940," NBER Working Papers 32407, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. 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).
    12. repec:iza:izadps:dp17647 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16280. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.