Sandra Black, Columbia University- Longevity and its Transmission Across Generations in the US

Joint seminar between the Department of Economics and the Melbourne Institute

Title: Longevity and its Transmission Across Generations in the US

joint with Neil Duzett, Adriana Lleras-Muney, Nolan Pope and Joe Price

Abstract: While there is substantial research on the intergenerational persistence of economic outcomes such as income and wealth, much less is known about intergenerational persistence in health. We examine the transmission of longevity (an overall measure of health) across generations using a unique dataset containing information obtained from the Family Search Family Tree about more than 26 million individuals born between 1880 and 1920. We find that mobility in longevity is high using both absolute and relative mobility measures. Between 45 and 55 percent of individuals live longer than their parents. We also compute correlations in longevity (the opposite of mobility) following the mobility literature in the US. The intergenerational correlation in longevity is 0.09 for both sexes and rises to 0.14 if we consider the correlation between children and the average of their parents' longevity. While absolute and relative measures suggest mobility is high, they differ substantially on other dimensions: absolute mobility was much higher for women than men, but relative mobility is identical for both. Relative measures show substantially less variation across time and subpopulations that absolute measures. Finally, we document that the intergenerational persistence of longevity is much smaller than the persistence in socio-economic status and lower than persistence in various measures of health. Moreover, correlations in longevity and in education are largely independent of each other.

Presenter: Sanda E. Black, Columbia University

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