Khanam Rasheda, Nghiem Hong Son, Connelly Luke Brian
School of Accounting, Economics and Finance, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia; Australian Centre for Economic Research on Health (ACERH), The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Health Econ. 2014 Aug;23(8):879-93. doi: 10.1002/hec.2961. Epub 2013 Jun 19.
The literature to date shows that children from poorer households tend to have worse health than their peers, and the gap between them grows with age. We investigate whether and how health shocks (as measured by the onset of chronic conditions) contribute to the income-child health gradient and whether the contemporaneous or cumulative effects of income play important mitigating roles. We exploit a rich panel dataset with three panel waves called the Longitudinal Study of Australian children. Given the availability of three waves of data, we are able to apply a range of econometric techniques (e.g. fixed and random effects) to control for unobserved heterogeneity. The paper makes several contributions to the extant literature. First, it shows that an apparent income gradient becomes relatively attenuated in our dataset when the cumulative and contemporaneous effects of household income are distinguished econometrically. Second, it demonstrates that the income-child health gradient becomes statistically insignificant when controlling for parental health and health-related behaviours or unobserved heterogeneity.
迄今为止的文献表明，来自贫困家庭的儿童往往比同龄人健康状况更差，而且他们之间的差距会随着年龄的增长而扩大。我们研究健康冲击（以慢性病的发病来衡量）是否以及如何导致收入与儿童健康之间的梯度变化，以及收入的同期或累积效应是否发挥重要的缓解作用。我们利用一个丰富的面板数据集，该数据集有三个面板波，称为澳大利亚儿童纵向研究。鉴于有三波数据可用，我们能够应用一系列计量经济学技术（如固定效应和随机效应）来控制未观察到的异质性。本文对现有文献做出了几项贡献。第一，它表明，当通过计量经济学方法区分家庭收入的累积效应和同期效应时，我们数据集中明显的收入梯度会相对减弱。第二，它表明，在控制了父母的健康状况、与健康相关的行为或未观察到的异质性后，收入与儿童健康之间的梯度在统计上变得不显著。
