Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/260160 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 2015:22
Publisher: 
Lund University, School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Lund
Abstract: 
Studies on the intergenerational transmission of human capital usually assume a one-way spillover from parents to children. But what if children also affect their parents' human capital? Using exogenous variation in education, arising from a Swedish compulsory schooling reform in the 1950s and 1960s, we address this question by studying the causal effect of children's schooling on their parents' longevity. We first replicate previous findings of a positive and significant cross-sectional relationship between children's education and their parents' longevity. Our causal estimates tell a different story; children's schooling has no significant effect on parents' survival. These results hold when we examine separate causes of death and when we restrict the sample to low-income and low-educated parents.
Subjects: 
Intergenerational transmission
Human capital
Longevity
Compulsory schooling
Education
JEL: 
I10
I21
I26
J14
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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