Mortality, Family and Lifestyles
Journal article: While there is a large empirical literature on the intergenerational transmission of health and survival outcomes in relation to lifestyles, little theoretical work exists on the long-run prevalence of (un)healthy lifestyles induced by mortality patterns. To examine that issue, this paper develops an overlapping generations model where a healthy lifestyle and an unhealthy lifestyle are transmitted vertically or obliquely across generations. It is shown that there must exist a locally stable heterogeneous equilibrium involving a majority of healthy agents, as a result of the larger parental gains from socialization efforts under a higher life expectancy. We also examine the robustness of our results to the introduction of parental altruistic concerns for children's health and of asymmetric socialization costs.
Author(s)
Grégory Ponthière
Journal
- Journal of Family and Economic Issues
Date of publication
- 2011
Keywords JEL
Keywords
- Altruism
- Family
- Lifestyle
- Longevity
- Socialization
Pages
- 175-190
URL of the HAL notice
Version
- 1
Volume
- 32