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Title: Childhood Health and Human Capital: New Evidence from Genetic Brothers in Arms

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2010

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Abstract: Childhood health can have a signi cant impact on both the amount of schooling a childreceives and the bene ts from that schooling. As a consequence, a negative shock to childhoodhealth can have a lasting impact on the economic success of an individual, through not justlingering impacts on physical human capital but also the impacts on human capital acquiredthrough formal schooling. This paper traces the evolution of childhood health and educationalattainment through the rst decades of the twentieth century in the United States and quanti esthe relationship between childhood health, proxied by adult height, and educational attainmentover time and across cities. A new dataset of brothers serving in World War II is constructedand used to demonstrate that this correlation is present within families, with taller brothersreceiving signi cantly more education on average than their shorter siblings. The results suggestthat childhood health strongly inuenced educational attainment in the early twentieth century even after controlling for household and environmental characteristics.

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Authors: Parman, John

Publisher: University of California, Davis

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Health, Other

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