Education disrupts the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage: Evidence from Danish linked administrative records

Education disrupts the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage: Evidence from Danish linked administrative records

Despite overall improvements in health and living standards in the Western world, health and social disadvantages persist across generations. Using linked nationwide administrative databases for 2.1 million Danish citizens across multiple generations, DUPRI’s Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt together with Leah Richmond-Rakerd at the University of Michigan and Signe Hald Andersen, Rockwool Foundation Research Unit, Denmark,  leveraged a unique three-generation approach to test whether different health and social disadvantages—poor physical health, poor mental health, social welfare dependency, criminal offending, and Child Protective Services involvement—were transmitted within families and whether education disrupted these associations.

Health and social disadvantages concentrated, aggregated, and accumulated within a small, high-need segment of families: Danish adults who relied disproportionately on multiple, different health and social services tended to have parents who similarly relied disproportionately on a variety of  health and social services and  children who evidenced risk for disadvantage at an early age based on appearance in protective services records. Intra- and intergenerational comparisons were consistent with the possibility that education disrupted this transmission. Within families, siblings who obtained more education were at a reduced risk for later-life disadvantage compared with their less educated co-siblings , despite shared family background.

Supporting the education potential of the most vulnerable citizens might mitigate the multigenerational transmission of multiple disadvantages and reduce health and social disparities.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS),  was supported by Grant AG032282 from the National Institute on Aging, Grant MR/P005918 from the UK Medical Research Council, and Grant 1221 from the Rockwool Foundation. Additional support was provided by National Institute of Child Health and Development Grant P2C HD065563 through the Duke Population Research Center and by the Jacobs Foundation.