Abstract:
This project investigates whether adult children's educational attainment
improves the health of their elderly parents and determines the transfer of monetary and in-kind
support to parents using two waves of the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS).
Specifically, we propose to study: (1) Whether adult children's education causes better health
outcomes of their elderly parents and whether these effects vary by child-specific characteristics
(e.g., sex, birth order, relationship to parents-biological, adopted, step child) and/or for
mothers and fathers; (2) Whether children's education determines provision of in-kind and
monetary support to aging parents and whether this provision varies by child-specific
characteristics and for mothers and fathers; and (3) The feasibility of estimating similar models
with other developing country datasets for preparation of an R01 application to the National
Institute of Aging (NIA) to permit comparisons across different country contexts. To account for
unobserved family characteristics and endogeneity of children's education, we use both fixed-effect
(FE) and instrumental variable (IV) approaches.
