Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/114155 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 9280
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
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: 
human capital
mortality
education
JEL: 
I10
I26
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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