An Analysis of Sibling Correlations in Health using Latent Variable Models
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Updated: Mar 7, 2026

Using Cholesky Decomposition to Explore Individual Differences in Longitudinal Relations between Reading Skills
Published on: September 17, 2019
Timothy J Halliday1,2, Bhashkar Mazumder3,4
1Department of Economics, University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA.
Abstract:
We investigate sibling correlations in youth health status using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We do so by estimating the covariance structure of a system of equations in latent variables using methods that have hitherto not been used in the literature on intergenerational transmissions of health. Across a battery of outcomes, we find that between 50 and 60% of health status can be attributed to shared familial or neighborhood characteristics. Taking the principal component across all outcomes, we obtain a sibling correlation of about 53%. These estimates, which are larger than previous estimates of sibling correlations in health that rely on linear models, are more in-line with sibling correlations in income and suggest that health status, like other measures of socioeconomic success, is strongly influenced by family background. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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