Mortality, family and lifestyles

Pre-print, Working paper: 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. Wealso 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

Date of publication
  • 2010
Keywords JEL
I12 J11 J13 Z13
Keywords
  • Altruism
  • Family
  • Lifestyle
  • Longevity
  • Socialization
Internal reference
  • PSE Working Papers n°2010-23
Version
  • 1