Intergenerational transmission and the effects of health on migration

This thesis conducts empirical analysis on the intergenerational transmission of adiposity, using various types of data from various countries; the same intergenerational transmission in China and how it varies with the family socioeconomic factors and age levels; the way in which health impinges on the decision to migrate in China. In the first empirical chapter we find that the intergenerational elasticity of adiposity is relatively constant – at 0.2 per parent, and this elasticity is comparable across time and countries. Quantile estimates suggest that this intergenerational transmission mechanism is more than double for the fattest children as it is for the thinnest children. The second empirical chapter examines the intergenerational transmission of adiposity in China: we use BMI z-score as another measure of adiposity, the longitudinal structure of CHNS data (1993-2009) allows us to control for individual fixed effects or family fixed effects and focus on changes in BMI z-score over the life cycle. We report patterns of the intergenerational relationship of BMI z-score varying by family socio-economic factors and the age of the child, the magnitude of this relationship reaches the peak over the stage between childhood and later adolescence. In the third empirical chapter, which also uses the CHNS data, we examine whether migrants are healthier than those who do not migrate in the places of origin in the context of internal migration in China. Based on the relative wage rates, costs of migration and the assumption of optimization, we set up a theoretical model and estimate the effects of health on the migration probability, we find that people self-evaluating as having “good” or “excellent” health are more likely to migrate, this health effects vary with the type of occupation, we also find evidence on the indirect health effects which operates through the education attainment.