Intergenerational Health Implications in the Labor Market: Exploring Parents' Health and Child's Subsequent Labor Outcome in Russia

HwaJung Choi, University of Michigan

Understanding behavioral response to parental health provides valuable insight for predicting a labor market situation, especially in a developing and transitional economy. This paper provides an economic framework incorporating labor supply, family economic linkage, and health dynamics. Using the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Study, empirical analysis shows that having an unhealthy father substantially reduces a daughter’s future working probability in the labor market: the daughter tends to demand time-intensive consumption relatively more than earning-intensive with unhealthy father. In the process of reallocating resources in response to a family member’s poor health, women tend to be more specialized to non-market labor and men to market labor when relative return on market labor is significantly lower for women. This paper also highlights that where family members are linked economically to each other, it is plausible that those members’ health conditions can play an even more significant role in determining one’s future economic behavior.