APPLIED MICRO: Professor Wolfgang Keller (HKUST)
Economic Opportunity and the Health-Status Gradient
We use three-generation linked genealogical records for more than 4,700 married men from seven Tongcheng, China clans — fathers and sons born between 1300 and 1800 — to study how intergenerational mobility in health and social status relates to the cross-sectional health-status gradient. We document a positive health-status gradient throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties: men at the top of the status distribution lived nearly 20 percent longer than those at the bottom, so combined health-status inequality exceeds inequality in either dimension alone. Turning to intergenerational dynamics, we find an asymmetry: a strong health-status gradient among sons goes together with high intergenerational persistence in health but high intergenerational mobility in status. The reason is that status is strongly inherited, so a son whose status differs sharply from his father’s must have had an unusually large personal change in fortune — and such large changes carry over strongly into health. Health, by contrast, is barely inherited at all, so a son whose lifespan resembles his father’s can only be explained by the father’s own health having been extreme to begin with — and that same extremity carries over into the son’s status.
Date
Wednesday, 12 August 2026
Time
12pm to 1.30pm
Venue
In-Person Seminar
AS2-03-12 Lim Tay Boh Seminar Room (LTBSR)
AS2-03-12 Lim Tay Boh Seminar Room (LTBSR)