Parental health and child schooling

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. Evidence on the role of parental health on child schooling is surprisingly thin. We explore this issue by estimating the short-run effects of parents' illness on child school enrollment. Our analysis is based on household panel data from Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country whose health and educational systems underwent extensive destruction during the 1992-1995 war. Using child fixed effects to correct for potential endogeneity bias, we find that -contrary to the common wisdom that shocks to the primary household earner should have more negative consequences for child education -it is especially maternal health that makes a difference as far as child schooling is concerned. Children whose mothers self-reported having poor health are about 7 percentage points less likely to be enrolled in education at ages 15-24. These results are robust to considering alternative indicators of parental health status such as the presence of limitations in the activities of daily living and depression symptoms. Moreover, we find that mothers' health shocks have more negative consequences on younger children and sons.JEL Classification: I21, O15

The Long-Term Cognitive and Socioeconomic Consequences of Birth Intervals: A Within-Family Sibling Comparison Using Swedish Register Data

“…Previous studies have also shown that parental health is correlated with offspring health (Modin et al 2009), which can in turn influence socioeconomic outcomes (Adler and Ostrove 1999). Furthermore, parental health can have a direct influence on offspring socioeconomic outcomes (Bratti and Mendola 2014). This previous research suggests that parental SES and parental health are likely to be confounding factors for the relationship between birth interval length and long-term educational, cognitive, and socioeconomic outcomes for the offspring.…”

Family structure and children’s educational attainment in transition economies

“…However, many transition governments did not maintain this positive feature, allowing the human capital advantage to dissipate due to weak public investment in education [1], [2], [3], [4]. Several studies show that different household-level shocks further hampered children's educational success, forced children to drop out of school [3], [5], [6], [7], or increased their probability of suffering from depression or other health problems [8]. Transition shocks also reduce the presence of parents in the household and the time they are able to devote to their children [9].…”

“…Among the most influential factors are the civil wars that occurred in the former Yugoslavia, Albania, and Tajikistan in the 1990s. A study on BiH explores the nexus between civil wars and children's educational attainment in the long term [5]. It focuses on the role parental health plays in children's schooling (health outcomes after the war were below those of other countries in the region).…”

Hard to Forget: The Long-Lasting Impact of War on Mental Health

“…Poor mental health may entail poor labour market conditions, income losses, and higher health expenses (Miranda and Patel, 2005). Studies of individual behaviour have documented the impact of mental health on employment, productivity and earnings (Ettner et al 1997;Bartel and Taubam, 1986), criminal activity (Steadman et al 1998), child abuse and neglect (Kelleher et al, 1994), homelessness (Jenks, 1994), fertility and divorce (Bartel and Taubman, 1986), and offspring's education (Bratti and Mendola, 2014). Emerging data from low-and middle-income countries further indicate a strong association between mental illness and low education, food insecurity, inadequate housing, poverty and financial stress (Das et al 2008;Patel and Kleinman 2003).…”