Unequal before death: The effect of paternal education on children’s old-age mortality in the United States

Abstract

A growing body of research documents the relevance of parental education as a marker of family socio-economic status for children’s later-life health outcomes. A strand of this literature evaluates how the early-life environment shapes mortality outcomes during infancy and childhood. However, the evidence on mortality during the life course and old age is limited. This paper contributes to the literature by analysing the association between paternal education and children’s old-age mortality. We use data from Social Security Administration death records over the years 1988–2005 linked to the United States 1940 Census. Applying a family(cousin)- fixed-effects model to account for shared environment, childhood exposures, and common endowments that may confound the long-term links, we find that having a father with a college or high-school education, compared with elementary/no education, is associated with a 4.6- or 2.6-month-higher age at death, respectively, for the child, conditional on them surviving to age 47.

Keywords:

• education
• family fixed effects
• mortality
• life expectancy
• historical data
• social benefits
• externality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Hamid Noghanibehambari is based in the Center for Demography of Health and Aging, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Jason Fletcher is based in La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin–Madison.

2 Please direct all correspondence to Hamid Noghanibehambari, Center for Demography of Health and Aging, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 180 Observatory Drive, Unit 4401 Madison Wisconsin 53706, USA; or by Email: [email protected].

3 The authors would like to acknowledge financial support from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), grant number R01AG060109, and the Center for Demography of Health and Aging at the University of Wisconsin–Madison under NIA core grant number P30 AG17266.