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Demography

Erschienen in:

01.02.2018

Health Endowment at Birth and Variation in Intergenerational Economic Mobility: Evidence From U.S. County Birth Cohorts

verfasst von: Cassandra Robertson, Rourke O’Brien

Erschienen in: Demography | Ausgabe 1/2018

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Abstract

New estimates of intergenerational economic mobility reveal substantial variation in the spatial distribution of opportunity in the United States. Efforts to explain this variation in economic mobility have conspicuously omitted health despite it being a key pathway for the transmission of economic position across generations. We begin to fill this gap in the literature by examining the relationship between health endowment at birth and intergenerational economic mobility across county birth cohorts in the United States, drawing on estimates from two population-level data sets. Exploiting variation across counties and over time, we find a negative relationship between the incidence of low-weight births and the level of economic mobility as measured in adulthood for the county birth cohorts in our sample. Our results build on a large and growing literature detailing the role of early childhood health in the transmission of economic status across generations and suggest that the incidence of low-weight births is negatively associated with intergenerational economic mobility.

Vorheriger Artikel Differences in Child Health Across Rural, Urban, and Slum Areas: Evidence From India

Nächster Artikel The Differential Mortality of Undesired Infants in Sub-Saharan Africa

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For the 1980 and 1981 birth cohorts, some states reported data on a random draw of 50 % of all live births. Because there is no systematic difference in births reported, our estimated rates should be generally consistent with those estimated from the full universe of births, and findings are robust to the exclusion of the years for which we do not have the full population of births in all counties.

These results are consistent with recent studies at the individual level showing heterogeneous parental response to the birth weight of their infant, with consequences for future outcomes. Although we cannot test these mechanisms without longitudinal data on individuals, recent research shows that better-educated parents devote more time, and more educationally oriented time, to lower birth weight children. Conversely, less-educated mothers adopt the opposite strategy, investing more time in their heavier children (reinforcing behavior). Therefore, families redistribute resources in response to their child’s birth weight in ways that can either offset or accentuate the effects of low birth weight. Crucially, compensatory investments by better educated mothers lead their children to catch up, leaving low-income, LBW children even further behind (Hsin 2012; Leigh and Liu 2016; Restrepo 2016).

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Titel: Health Endowment at Birth and Variation in Intergenerational Economic Mobility: Evidence From U.S. County Birth Cohorts
verfasst von: Cassandra Robertson
Rourke O’Brien
Publikationsdatum: 01.02.2018
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Demography / Ausgabe 1/2018
Print ISSN: 0070-3370
Elektronische ISSN: 1533-7790
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0646-3

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