TY  - JOUR
AU  - Case,Anne
AU  - Paxson,Christina
TI  - The Long Reach of Childhood Health and Circumstance: Evidence from the Whitehall II Study
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15640
PY  - 2010
Y2  - January 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15640
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15640.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Anne Case
367 Wallace Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609/258-2177
Fax: 609/258-5974
E-Mail: accase@princeton.edu

Christina Paxson
424 Robertson Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544-1022
Tel: 609/258-6474
Fax: 609/258-5974
E-Mail: cpaxson@princeton.edu
AB  - We use data from the Whitehall II study to examine the potential role played by early-life health and circumstances in determining health and employment status in middle and older ages.  The population from which the Whitehall II cohort was drawn consisted almost exclusively of white collar civil servants. We demonstrate that estimates of the impact of early-life conditions based on the Whitehall II cohort provide a lower bound on the effect of early-life circumstances on adult health and economic status for the population as a whole. That said, using the Whitehall II cohort data, we find early life circumstances are all predictive of entry grade and promotion to higher grade in Whitehall. Even with controls for entry grade or current grade, we find that childhood circumstances predict cohort members' current health status. Using fixed effect and first-difference models of self-assessed health status and civil service employment grade, we find no evidence of civil service grade affecting future self-assessed health. However, we find self-assessed health has a significant effect on future civil service grade.
ER  -