Education of Children and Differential Mortality of Parents: Do Parents Benefit from Their Children’s Attainments?

PWP-CCPR-2010-011

Abstract

Contemporary stratification research on developed societies usually views the intergenerational transmission of educational advantage as a one-way effect from parent to child. However, parents’ investment in their children’s education may yield significant returns for parents themselves in later life. Well-educated children have greater knowledge of health and technology to share with their parents and more financial means to provide for parents than do their less-educated counterparts. This paper considers the effects of children’s educational attainment on the survival of parents, net of parents’ own socioeconomic status. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine whether children’s educational attainment affects parents’ survival and how these effects compare with those of parents’ own income and wealth. Our findings suggest that one’s own education, income, and wealth are, in fact, associated with mortality. More importantly, though, we find that sons’ and daughters’ education have independent effects on parents’ mortality. We also find that at least part of the association between children’s education and parents’ survival can be explained by the health behaviors of parents.