The role of mothers and fathers in children’s health care use

We use rich longitudinal administrative medical records to examine the separate roles of mothers and fathers in children's health care use. We do so distinguishing between different types of care and child sex. Overall, we find limited evidence of an association between parents' education and their children's health care use. Mothers' health care use appears in general more strongly associated than fathers' health care use with that of their children. On the other hand, for some types of care (GP and specialist visits), these associations in health care use are stronger within the same-sex parent-child dyads. These results are not (fully) explained by parental nor children's health needs and health behaviors and are robust to the inclusion of GP fixed effects. These associations remain after controlling for unobserved time-invariant factors suggesting that non-health related family shocks also play a role. Our findings have potentially important policy implications, as patterns of health care seeking are established early in life, which the literature shows have long-lasting effects over people's life course.