Offspring education and parental mortality: Evidence from South Asia

Abstract

Decades of research shows that education not only confers individual health benefits, but it also spills over to advantage subsequent generations. More recently, research has confirmed that the intergenerational health benefits of education can also flow upward: aging adults with more highly educated children enjoy better health and survival. Research has documented this finding in high-income settings, and also in select low- and middle-income contexts, raising questions about the mechanisms through which having an adult child who attended relatively low levels of education in high-mortality contexts can benefit aging parents’ well-being. In this study, we use multilevel, long-term panel data on a cohort of older adults from the Chitwan Valley Family Study in rural Nepal to establish whether the association between offspring education and parents’ survival is observable in this extremely poor, agrarian context. Extending past studies, we then leverage additional data on older adults to examine the association between offspring education and two theorized mechanisms: older adults’ better health behaviors and greater support in later life.

Does having highly educated adult children reduce mortality risks for parents with low educational attainment in Europe?

“…Zimmer et al (2002) found that, in Taiwan, the level of education of an adult child was positively associated with older parents’ greater physical functioning, and negatively associated with the mortality of their elderly parents, particularly among parents who already had severe health problems at the start of the mortality follow-up (Zimmer et al , 2007). While various later studies have also demonstrated an association between an individual's mortality and the quality of children in terms of their educational attainment, a growing share of this work has primarily focused on low- and middle-income countries (Zimmer et al , 2002, 2007; Yahirun et al , 2016, 2017; Yang et al , 2016; De Neve and Harling, 2017; Smith-Greenaway et al , 2018). As recently noted (De Neve and Kawachi, 2017), one reason for the dearth of research in high-income contexts may be the expectation that the influence of adult children on parental health is likely to be less pronounced in countries with developed welfare systems providing for the vulnerable and elderly.…”

“…Such resources are associated with parents’ lower exposure to health risks ( e.g. smoking and alcohol use) and greater receipt of support (Smith-Greenaway et al , 2018), and are found to predict parents’ physical limitations (Zimmer et al , 2002; Yahirun et al , 2016). Although recent evidence also indicates that adult children's education is not necessarily associated with short-term changes in parents’ physical functioning in the Mexican context, it is nonetheless associated with increased parents’ longevity (Yahirun et al , 2017).…”

“…The educational achievements of spouses may have an additional impact on an individual's mortality (Monden et al , 2003; Skalická and Kunst, 2008), as well as the average education level in their community (Kravdal, 2008). More recently, a new line of thinking has indicated that adult children's socio-economic status may also be associated with the health and mortality of their parents, with growing evidence from low- to high-income countries (Zimmer et al , 2002, 2007, 2016; Torssander, 2013, 2014; Friedman and Mare, 2014; Lundborg and Majlesi, 2015; Yahirun et al , 2016, 2017; Yang et al , 2016; De Neve and Harling, 2017; Elo et al , 2018; Smith-Greenaway et al , 2018).…”

Children’s education and parental old-age health: Evidence from a population-based, nationally representative study in India

“…Evidence on the health benefits of children's education for older generations dates back to at least the early 2000s (Zimmer et al 2002). Since then, a consistent positive association has been identified between children's education and a wide range of parental health outcomes, including: (1) parental mortality (Torssander 2013;Friedman and Mare 2014;Elo et al 2018;Smith-Greenaway et al 2018;Wolfe et al 2018;Sabater et al 2019); (2) parental physical health (Yahirun et al 2016(Yahirun et al , 2017Meyer et al 2019); and (3) parental mental health (Sabater and Graham 2016;Lee 2018;Peng et al 2019;Yahirun et al 2020). These associations persist after controlling for parents' demographic and socio-economic characteristics (De Neve and Kawachi 2017).…”

Offspring Education and Parents’ Health Inequality in China: Evidence from Spillovers of Education Reform

“…These benefits vary by region and income. In low- and middle-income areas with inadequate public support and social security, such as in Tanzania, South Africa, and Nepal, the spillovers are even stronger [ 26 , 27 , 28 ].…”