Arbeitspapier

The Intergenerational Transmission of Health in Early Childhood

The prevalence and importance of children's physical health problems have been increasingly recognized in recent years. Physical health problems of children such as obesity, motor impairment and chronic diseases cause social costs. Further, they can lead directly to adult physical health problems, which cause additional social costs. This paper examines the intergenerational link and transmission of both maternal and paternal health on children's health in Germany. We investigate this issue using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), making particular use of the mother and child questionnaires. These data allow us to capture a broad set ofhealth measures: anthropometric, self-rated health and "more objective" health measures. The results indicate significant relationships between parental and child health in the first and third year of life. In order to take into account the endogeneity of parental health, we estimate fixed effect models. Overall, we find, controlling for parental income, education and family composition, that parents who experience poor health have children with significantly poorer health. For example, the father's bodymass index (BMI) is a predictor for their children's BMI. Mothers who consider their health as good, have also healthier children.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research ; No. 126

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Health Behavior
Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
Thema
Intergenerational transmission
child health
parental health
early childhood

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Coneus, Katja
Spieß, C. Katharina
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW)
(wo)
Berlin
(wann)
2008

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:42 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Coneus, Katja
  • Spieß, C. Katharina
  • Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW)

Entstanden

  • 2008

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