From Children to Parents? Children’s Educational Attainment and Parents Mortality

• In Event: 499 - Section on Aging and the Life Course Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Lifetime Socioeconomic Influences on Health

Abstract

As research investigating the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and health and mortality proliferates, the need for studies of the extensive links between family level socioeconomic resources—beyond one’s own SES—and health has increased. However, very few studies focused on whether adult offspring’s SES matters for their parents’ health and mortality independent of parents’ own SES. In this study I contribute to literature by examining whether parents’ mortality is affected by adult children’s educational attainment using Korean data from 2006 to 2012. This study also extends the previous research by empirically testing mechanisms through which adult children’s schooling contributes to their parental longevity by including comprehensive mediators: frequency of contacts and financial support provided by offspring. I find a significant relationship between children’s education and parent’s longevity even after controlling for parent's socioeconomic characteristics. The statistical power of the relationship is removed, however, when frequency of contacts and financial support for parents are simultaneously controlled for. The result suggests that adult children's education can promote parental health via better social supports and investment in the younger generation's education can be a strategy to address healthy aging.

Author

• YeonJin Lee, University of Pennsylvania