Intergenerational Educational Attainments and later life Health: A comparison between the elderly in Taiwan and United States

Education is crucial in shaping people’s health throughout life. Studies from the United States largely confirm that education’s positive effect on health gets more profound as people age. Education represents an important means of intergenerational social mobility. But few studies have examined the effect of father’s educational attainments on their children’s health in later life. Data were from the Health and Retirement Study and the Taiwan Longitudinal Survey of Aging. Age comparable respondents were extracted from the surveys. A total of 6,294 Americans (aged 50 through 62 in 1992) were identified and both father and respondents’ educational attainments were included in the Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) models to predict their longitudinal self-rated health (SRH) in 1992, 1996, and 2000. The same procedures were conducted to the Taiwanese sample derived from the 1999, 2003, and 2007 waves (N=1,065, aged between 53 through 63 in 1999). Positive correlations between respondents and their father’s educational attainments (p<0.001) were found in both the American and Taiwanese samples. The GEE results indicated that, among American adults, father’s education attainments was a significant predictor of respondent’ SRH (p=0.006), after controlling for their own educational attainments and other covariates. However, no such association was found among the Taiwanese elderly. Father’s education attainments is a proxy of childhood socioeconomic status and, among American older adults, this indicator is predictive of their health decades later. Further examination on the mechanisms of health inequalities across different societies is the first step towards a deeper understanding of social and health inequalities.