The Schooling of Offspring and the Survival of Parents
The Schooling of Offspring and the Survival of Parents
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DOI：
10.1007/s13524-014-0303-z
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发表时间：
2014-08-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.5
通讯作者：
Mare, Robert D.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Friedman, Esther M.;Mare, Robert D.
当代对发达社会的分层研究通常将教育优势的代际传递视为从父母到孩子的单向效应。然而，父母对子女教育的投资可能会在以后的生活中为父母自己带来丰厚的回报。例如，与受教育程度较低的后代相比，受过良好教育的后代有更多的健康和技术知识可以与父母分享，并且有更多的经济手段来养活他们。我们使用 1992-2006 年健康与退休研究 (HRS) 的数据来研究成年子女的教育程度是否与父母在美国的生存有关。我们表明，即使在控制了父母自身的社会经济资源之后，成年子女的受教育程度对其父母的死亡率也有独立的影响。对于与行为因素相关的死亡，这种关系更为明显：最明显的是，慢性下呼吸道疾病和肺癌。此外，后代的学业与父母的生存之间的至少部分关联可以通过父母的健康行为来解释，包括吸烟和体育活动。这些发现表明，影响老年人健康的一种方法是通过他们的后代。为了充分发挥学校教育对健康的价值，需要家庭和多代人的视角。
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 offspring's schooling may yield significant returns for parents themselves in later life. For instance, well-educated offspring have greater knowledge of health and technology to share with their parents and more financial means to provide for them than do their less-educated counterparts. We use data from the 1992-2006 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine whether adult offspring's educational attainments are associated with parents' survival in the United States. We show that adult offspring's educational attainments have independent effects on their parents' mortality, even after controlling for parents' own socioeconomic resources. This relationship is more pronounced for deaths that are linked to behavioral factors: most notably, chronic lower respiratory disease and lung cancer. Furthermore, at least part of the association between offspring's schooling and parents' survival may be explained by parents' health behaviors, including smoking and physical activity. These findings suggest that one way to influence the health of the elderly is through their offspring. To harness the full value of schooling for health, then, a family and multigenerational perspective is needed.