{"title":"Family and Community Influences on Health and Socioeconomic Status: Sibling Correlations Over the Life Course.","authors":"Bhashkar Mazumder","doi":"10.2202/1935-1682.2876","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper presents new estimates of sibling correlations in health and socioeconomic outcomes over the life course in the U.S. Sibling correlations provide an omnibus measure of the importance of all family and community influences. I find that sibling correlations in a range of health and socioeconomic outcomes start quite high at birth and remain high over the life course. The sibling correlation in birth weight is estimated to be 0.5. Sibling correlations in test scores during childhood are as high as 0.6. Sibling correlations in adult men's wages are also around 0.5. Decompositions provide suggestive evidence on which pathways may account for the gradients in health and SES by family background. For example, sibling correlations in cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills during childhood are lower controlling for family income. Similarly, parent education levels can account for a sizable portion of the correlation in adult health status among brothers.</p>","PeriodicalId":47400,"journal":{"name":"B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2011-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2202/1935-1682.2876","citationCount":"45","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2202/1935-1682.2876","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 45
Abstract
This paper presents new estimates of sibling correlations in health and socioeconomic outcomes over the life course in the U.S. Sibling correlations provide an omnibus measure of the importance of all family and community influences. I find that sibling correlations in a range of health and socioeconomic outcomes start quite high at birth and remain high over the life course. The sibling correlation in birth weight is estimated to be 0.5. Sibling correlations in test scores during childhood are as high as 0.6. Sibling correlations in adult men's wages are also around 0.5. Decompositions provide suggestive evidence on which pathways may account for the gradients in health and SES by family background. For example, sibling correlations in cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills during childhood are lower controlling for family income. Similarly, parent education levels can account for a sizable portion of the correlation in adult health status among brothers.
期刊介绍:
The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy welcomes submissions that employ microeconomics to analyze issues in business, consumer behavior, and public policy. We aim to be an international forum for scholarship, whether the scholarship considers an issue that is general or that pertains to a particular country or region, but authors should bear in mind that our readers come from around the world. Potential issues of interest include: the interaction of firms, the functioning of markets, the effects of domestic and international policy, and the design of organizations and institutions.