tailieunhanh - THE IMPACT OF PARENTAL INCOME AND EDUCATION ON CHILD HEALTH: FURTHER EVIDENCE FOR ENGLAND

The fourth, fifth and sixth columns show the results of the models estimated using instrumental variables. The fourth column shows the results of using household assets as instruments, while controlling for community fixed effects. The fifth column also uses household assets as instruments but it conditions on a wide set of community characteristics instead of using community fixed effects. The last column uses average wages in the municipality as instruments. Though the IV estimates are less accurate than the OLS ones, our estimates are significantly different from zero at the 95% of confidence. The point estimates are much larger. | UCD GEARY INSTITUTE DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES The Impact of Parental Income and Education on Child Health Further Evidence for England Dr. Orla Doyle UCD Geary Institute UCD Dublin Tel 00353 1 7164637 Fax 00353 1 7161108 Professor Colm p. Harmon UCD Geary Institute UCD School of Economics UCD Dublin Tel 00353 1 7164614 Fax 00353 1 7161108 Professor Ian Walker Department of Economics University of Warwick Coventry CV4 7AL - UK Institute for Fiscal Studies UK 01 February 2007 This paper is produced as part of the Human Development and Public Policy research programme at Geary however the views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Geary Institute. All errors and omissions remain those of the author. Corresponding author E-mail Tel 00353 1 7164637 Fax 00353 1 7161108 Geary WP 6 2007 1 Abstract This paper investigates the robustness of recent findings on the effect of parental education and income on child health. We are particularly concerned about spurious correlation arising from the potential endogeneity of parental income and education. Using an instrumental variables approach our results suggest that the parental income and education effects are generally larger than are suggested by the correlations observed in the data. Moreover we find strong support for the causal effect of income being large for the poor but small at the average level of income. JEL Classifications I1 Keywords Child health Intergenerational Transmission Geary WP 6 2007 2 1. Introduction There is a vast literature documenting the relationship between socioeconomic status SES and health see for example Wilkinson and Marmot 2003 . Specifically the relationship between the health of children and the income of their parents has been the focus of much research. This relationship is important because it has been shown that the effects are long-lasting - poor health in childhood is associated with lower .