The Intergenerational Transmission of Health During Childhood

Health during childhood is a key determinant of future outcomes. However, some children start life in an unfavourable situation just because of their family inheritance. This study analyses mother's health effect on their offspring's health aged 0–12 years, and the interaction between mothers’ health and education in the child's health production. By using an original instrument and applying an endogenous multivariate probit to the last two “Enquêtes Camerounaises Auprès des Ménages” (ECAM 3 and 4), the study reveals an intergenerational transmission of health during childhood life and the complementarity of mothers' health and educational capital in the production of health for their children. Although inequalities in health decrease with the mother's educational level, there are thresholds beyond which this effect fade due to the potential excessive participation of women in the labour market. The fall in this phenomenon in the older cohort (6 to 12 years) reveals the importance for the most educated mothers to make a more altruistic trade-off between economic work and childcare in the first five years of their offspring's lives. However, the self-assessed use of healthcare by children reported by parents could be a limitation inherent to the quality of the data used in the Cameroonian context.