TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Halliday, Timothy J.
AU  - Mazumder, Bhashkar
AU  - Sinha, Kompal
AU  - Wang, Huixia
        TI  - Intergenerational Persistence of Health in Indonesia: The Importance of Using Biomarkers
        PY  - 2026/Feb/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18365
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp18365
        AB  - We examine health persistence between parents and their adult children in Indonesia using both subjective and objective health measures including biomarkers. Using Principal Components Analysis, we estimate the interegenerational persistence of the combination of these measures to be 0.30, providing some of the first estimates of the transmission of latent health for a middle income country. We also detect a highly significant second principal component suggesting that health has multiple dimensions.  We find especially strong associations for biomarkers such as hemoglobin, the pulse rate and hypertension which have typically not been studied in prior intergenerational studies. Transmission is stronger from mothers, and to daughters. We find relatively little variation in intergenerational health transmission by family income or SES. However, we do find strong positive gradients between family SES and the pulse rate and obseity suggesting potential health pitfalls as low and middle income countries further develop. Our findings suggest a potentially important role for policies focused on maternal health in reducing the intergenerational transmission of health.
        KW  - intergenerational persistence
KW  - health
KW  - biomarkers
KW  - Indonesia
        ER  -