子女教育对中老年父母健康的影响

The Impact of Adult Children’s Education on the Health of Middle Aged and Elderly Parents

按照联合国标准,中国已于1999年进入了老龄化社会,老龄化程度逐步加深。同时人们的受教育程度也在不断提升,尤其是年轻人群体,这使得子代的教育水平通常会高于父辈。自Grossman(1972)从理论上提出教育会对健康产生正面影响以后,国内外大量文献从实证上证明了两者的关系,但是现有研究基本忽略了子女教育对父母健康的影响。本文通过使用2015年的中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS)数据,运用OLS和工具变量等计量方法考察子女教育对中老年父母健康的影响。考虑一个家庭可能有不止一个子女,为此以受教育程度最大的子女样本作为基准回归并采用受教育程度最小的子女样本对结果进行检验以保证结果的稳健性。结果发现子女教育对中老年父母健康具有显著的正面影响,采用受教育程度最小的子女样本进行检验结果并未发生改变。异质性分析发现子女教育对父母健康的影响存在年龄异质性,即子女教育对60岁及以上群体父母健康的影响更大。进一步对影响机制分析发现子女教育能够通过放松父母所面对的预算约束和优化父母健康行为促进其健康改善。基于以上分析,文章认为现阶段在老龄化较为严重的地区特别是贫困地区以及农村地区增加对下一代的教育投资可以显著改善其父母健康。

According to United Nations standards,China has entered an aging society in 1999,and the aging is deepening gradually.Along with the deepening of China’s aging,people’s education level is also rising,especially among young people,which makes the education of children usually higher than that of their parents.Since Grossman(1972)put forward the theory that education will have a positive impact on health,a large number of literatures both at home and abroad have proved the relationship between them.However,the current research basically ignores the impact of adult children’s education on their parents’ health.By using the 2015 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS)data and using OLS and the instrumental variable methods,this paper examines the impact of adult children’s education on the health of middle-aged and elderly parents.Considering that a family may have more than one child,this paper takes the sample of the most educated children as the benchmark regression,and uses the sample of the least educated children to test the results to ensure the robustness of the results.The results showed that adult children’s education had a significant positive impact on the health of middle-aged and elderly parents.The sample with the least education were used for the test,and the results did not change.Heterogeneity analysis found that there was age heterogeneity in the impact of adult children’s education on parents’health,that is,adult children’s education has a greater impact on parents’health in the age group of 60 and above.Further analysis of the impact mechanism found that adult children’s education can promote their health improvement by relaxing the budgetary constraints faced by parents and optimizing their healthy behavior.Based on the above analysis,we believe that at the present stage,in the areas where parents are less educated,especially in poor areas and rural areas,increasing their investment in the next generation of education can significantly improve their parents’health.