Do Measured and Unmeasured Family Factors Bias the Association Between Education and Self-Assessed Health? |
| |
Authors: | Christiaan W S Monden |
| |
Institution: | (1) Department of Sociology, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000LE Tilburg, The Netherlands |
| |
Abstract: | The association between educational attainment and self-assessed health is well established but the mechanisms that explain
this association are not fully understood yet. It is likely that part of the association is spurious because (genetic and
non-genetic) characteristics of a person’s family of origin simultaneously affect one’s educational attainment and one’s adult
health. In order to obtain an unbiased estimate of the association between education and health, we have to control for all
relevant family factors. In practice, however, it is impossible to measure all relevant family factors. Sibling models are
particularly appropriate in this case, because they control for the total impact of family factors, even if not all relevant
aspects can be measured. I use data on siblings from a US study (MIDUS) and Dutch study (NKPS) to assess the total family
impact on self-assessed health and, more importantly, to assess whether there is a family bias in the association between
educational attainment and self-assessed health. The results suggest that there is a substantial family effect; about 20%
of the variation in self-assessed health between siblings can be ascribed to (measured and unmeasured) family factors. Measured
family factors, such as parental education and father’s occupation, could account only for a small part of the family effect.
Furthermore, the results imply that it is unlikely that there is substantial bias due to family effects in the association
between education and self-assessed health. This strengthens the conclusions from prior studies on the association between
education and self-assessed health. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|