title: The role of permanent income and family structure in the determination of child health in Canada.
abstract: We use data from the Ontario Child Health Study (OCHS) to provide the first Canadian estimates of how the empirical association between child health and both low-income and family status (lone-mother versus two-parent) changes when we re-estimate the model with pooled data. Two waves of data provide a better indication of the family's long-run level of economic resources than does one wave. Our measures of health status include categorical indicators and the health utility score derived from the Health Utilities Index Mark 2 (HUI2) system. Consistent with findings from other countries, we find that most outcomes are more strongly related to low-average income (in 1982 and 1986) than to low-current income in either year. Unlike some previous research, we find the quantitative impact of low-income on child health to be modest to large. Lone-mother status is negatively associated with most outcomes, but the lone-mother coefficients did not change significantly when we switched from low-current income to low-average income. This implies that the lone-mother coefficient in single cross-sections is not just a proxy for low-permanent income.
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. lori.curtis@dal.ca
authors.forename: L J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Curtis
authors.forename: M D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Dooley
authors.forename: E L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Lipman
authors.forename: D H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Feeny
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002170:Canada / Q000453:epidemiology; D002648:Child; D002669:Child Welfare / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003625:Data Collection; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005260:Female; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009313:National Health Programs; D020954:Single-Parent Family