Linked Lives and Health: Registry-Based Study of How Parents’ Health Shocks Change Healthcare Use of Adult Children

Lucie Kalousova , University of California-Riverside
Maciej J. Danko, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Henrik Brønnum-Hansen, University of Copenhagen
Anna Oksuzyan, Bielefeld University

Past literature has shown that a health shock in one member of a married couple is likely to lead to changes in the lifestyle and health of the other. Based on the linked lives theoretical perspective, we anticipate that such changes may extend further beyond the dyad: to children. We advance the literature by leveraging the unique registry-linked survey data REGLINK-SHAREDK collected in Denmark that includes administrative data on healthcare use of adult children. We ask the following questions. Is a parental health shock associated with changes in non-urgent health care use among their adult children? Do the changes in healthcare use of adult children following a parent’s health shock vary by the shock’s severity? Is the association between parental health shock and adult child’s health shock modified by geographic and/or emotional closeness? We discuss descriptive characteristics of the sample and outline the planned analytic steps we intend to complete before the EPC 2020 meeting.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 88. Linked Lives: Grandparents, Parents, and Children