Sources of Generational Persistence in Education and Income

In this paper, we find that the benefits of a low-cost early-life health intervention transfer from one generation to the next. Importantly, we show that there are only significant education and income spillovers if the mothers were exposed. We provide novel evidence that improved marriage outcomes of mothers, but not fathers, are an important source of the estimated intergenerational spillovers. Moreover, we document that the early-life healthcare policy significantly increased intergenerational mobility across three generations making it a key candidate to contribute to reducing cycles of poverty.