Intergenerational mobility in self-reported health status in the US

Intergenerational health mobility: Magnitudes and Importance of Schools and Place

“…However, mother-daughter estimates are more stable as daughters age. Third, the authors report nearly identical results when using 21 objective health measures instead of self-rated health status (Halliday et al, 2021)-our data only contain the latter for the parent's generation. Finally, the authors applied the rank-based approach from Chetty et al (2014), which they found to exhibit improved properties regarding the assumption of linearity for estimation in the health context (Halliday et al, 2020).…”

“…12 Estimates using the PSID suggest the rank slope coefficient to be 0.261 and expected child health rank for those whose parents are at the 25th (75th) percentile of parent health is 44.3 (57.4) (Halliday et al, 2021). Our Add Health sample also uncovers a higher rank slope for motherchild health relative to father-child rank slope (consistent with Halliday et al, 2021), and parent-daughter persistence is greater than parent-son persistence (see Appendix Table A.1.2). 13 In order to both replicate and extend results in the PSID by Halliday et al, we next consider heterogeneity of these estimates by race/ethnicity, parent and child characteristics, and geography.…”

“…This index maps the survey response of self-rated health status to a scale representing quality of life-conceptualizing perfect health with a score of one hundred and death with a score of zero (Erickson, 1998;Erickson et al, 1995). It has also been applied previously in the literature to address concerns surrounding the marginal distribution of health from the Likert scale (Halliday et al, 2021;Johnson & Schoeni, 2011). Following this work, our analysis assigns the midpoint of established HALex interval values of 15, 50, 77.5, 90, and 97.5 to self-rated health statuses of poor, fair, good, very good, and excellent in both generations each wave.…”

“…Finally, the authors applied the rank-based approach from Chetty et al (2014), which they found to exhibit improved properties regarding the assumption of linearity for estimation in the health context (Halliday et al, 2020). Halliday et al (2021) makes many important contributions to our understanding of intergenerational persistence of general health status. The PSID affords many advantages including regular observations of individuals over time, a genealogical design, up to 50 years of data on multiple generations, and in recent years, the inclusion of rich data on health conditions.…”

“…Our analysis estimates intergenerational health persistence to be 0.170, while children born to parents in the 25th (75th) percentile of health on average achieve the 47th (56th) percentile of health. However, based on the results in Halliday et al (2021), these persistence estimates are likely biased downward. A key contribution in our estimates is the ability to compare across groups and locations.…”