Parental income, lifetime income, and mortality

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Palme, Marten; Sandgren, Sofia
• 署名单位: Stockholm University; Uppsala University; Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1162/JEEA.2008.6.4.890
• 发表日期: 2008
• 页码: 890-911
• 关键词: childhood; HEALTH

摘要

This article studies the relation between parental economic resources and mortality later in life. We use a data set on a cohort of individuals born in 1928 in the county of Malmo in southern Sweden, which contains exceptionally detailed measures of parental household income from five years during the individuals' childhood between 1929 and 1942. The data also contain very rich information on individual earnings throughout these individuals' entire life cycle that allows us to construct a measure of lifetime earnings. Date and cause of death are obtained from national registers. Using Cox proportional hazard models, we find an inverse relationship between parental income and mortality, also when controlling for individual lifetime income and when studying those with high education separately. A competing risk analysis shows the relation between parental income and mortality to apply to cancer as the cause of death.