THE INCOME-HEALTH GRADIENT IN CHILDHOOD ESSAYS ON THE INCOME-HEALTH GRADIENT IN CHILDHOOD By

ii This dissertation is comprised of three essays, the goals of which are to provide an empirical understanding of how the income-health relationship evolves with child age and the underlying mechanisms. Previous research, conducted in US and Canadian settings, has found a positive association between household income and child health, which strengthens with age. One reason for this relationship may be that low-income children are more likely to suffer from chronic conditions than high-income children. While US research has controlled for the effects of parental health when examining the gradient, Canadian work has not. In Chapter 1, we seek to determine whether the Canadian findings persist after controlling for parental health status. Our results show that this adjustment reduces the size of the gradient in childhood and, impor tantly, indicates that it does not increase with age. In Chapter 2, we contribute to this literature by applying more flexible estimation techniques, namely nonparamet ric models, to understand the gradient in childhood. Our results provide evidenc