Experimental Evidence on Intergenerational Transmission of Economic Status

健康差距和贫困的持续存在是一个重大的全球经济政策问题。尽管如此，人们对经济地位和人力资本的代际传递知之甚少，部分原因是数据有限。这项研究将提供儿童健康干预的长期和代际影响的因果证据，评估健康和人力资本干预是否有可能改善接受者的成人社会经济地位及其子女的生活结果。此外，研究将使用为该项目收集的丰富的纵向调查数据来研究成人生活变化可能转化为代际影响的潜在机制，以及这些影响是否因性别或社会经济地位而异。这项研究的结果对关于促进代际流动和减少持续存在的经济不平等的方法的公共政策设计具有重要影响。这项研究利用实验和非实验变量来检验儿童健康投资的长期和代际回报，方法是将随机干预与包含项目参与者及其子女详细信息的26年纵向数据集相结合。该项目扩展了以学校为基础的驱虫干预和随机现金赠款干预的数据收集，涉及6500名项目参与者(1998年年龄为8-15岁)，以创建一个新的代际小组数据集。利用这个数据集，这项研究将研究推动经济地位代际传递的潜在机制，包括人力资本、经济偏好和态度、生活水平和经济地位，以及父母的投资决定。了解这些代际儿童福祉的驱动力，对于帮助被边缘化的个人在美国和国际上摆脱贫困和改善健康的公共政策具有重要意义。研究结果对促进代际流动和减少持续存在的经济不平等的方法的公共政策设计具有重要影响。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The persistence of health disparities and poverty is a major global economic policy issue. Despite this, relatively little is known about the intergenerational transmission of economic status and human capital, in part due to limited data. This study will provide causal evidence of the long-term and intergenerational impacts of child health interventions, assessing whether a health and human capital intervention has the potential to improve recipients’ adult socioeconomic status as well as life outcomes of their children. In addition, the research will use the rich longitudinal survey data collected for the project to study potential mechanisms through which adult life changes may translate into intergenerational impacts, and whether these effects differ by gender or socioeconomic status. The results of this research have important implications for public policy design regarding approaches to promote intergenerational mobility and reduce persistent economic inequalities. The results could also inform policies to reduce wealth inequalities across socioeconomic groups over time.This research utilizes both experimental and non-experimental variation to examine the long-term and intergenerational returns to child health investments, by combining randomized interventions with a 26-year longitudinal dataset containing detailed information on both program participants and their children. This project extends data collection of a school-based deworming intervention and a randomized cash grants intervention for 6,500 program participants (who were aged 8-15 in 1998), to create a novel intergenerational panel dataset. Using this dataset, the research will study the potential mechanisms driving the intergenerational transmission of economic status, including human capital, economic preferences, and attitudes, living standards and economic status, and parental investment decisions. Understanding these intergenerational drivers of child well-being has important implications for public policies to assist marginalized individuals in escaping poverty and improving health in both the US and internationally. The results have important implications for public policy design regarding approaches to promote intergenerational mobility and reduce persistent economic inequalities. The results could also inform policies to reduce wealth inequalities across socioeconomic groups over time.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.