Parental health, adolescents’ mental distress and non-cognitive skills

Drawing on nationally representative UK data, we explore the association of parental health and disability with mental distress and non-cognitive skills development of adolescents; both self-reported and more objectively measured biomarkers are used to capture parental health. Overall, we demonstrate a systematic association between parental health/disability and the non-cognitive skills development of adolescents living in the same household. However, considerable heterogeneity in these associations is observed both between and within mother’s and father’s health and disability measures. Much less evident is the link between parental health/disability and adolescents' mental distress. Our findings suggest that each parent’s health and disability status may be differentially associated with adolescents’ non-cognitive skills development.