Children's education and parental old age survival - Quasi-experimental evidence on the intergenerational effects of human capital investment

While a large literature has investigated the role of parental human capital on children's well-being, relatively little is known regarding the effects of human capital investment in children on long run outcomes of parents. In this study we explore the human capital variations created by the 1974 Tanzania education reform to estimate the effect of children's primary schooling attainment on parental survival. Using 5,026,315 census records from 1988, 2002, and 2012, we show that the 1974 reform resulted in an additional 1.1 years (31%) of educational attainment among exposed cohorts. Using the reform as instrument for child education we find that each additional year of primary schooling in children resulted in a 3.7 percentage point reduction (p < .001) in the probability of maternal death, and a 0.8 percentage point reduction (p = .011) in the probability of paternal death by the time exposed child cohorts reach age 50. The results suggest that-at least in a setting where social security coverage is largely absent-a substantial fraction of human capital gains generated by reforms are shared with the parental generation.