Publication Type
Working Paper
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
1-2026
Abstract
Health and well-being in mature adulthood are important concerns given the prevalence of individuals aging without children. We exploit two new instruments for childlessness— infertility and the number of childless siblings—and condition our analyses on a rich set of covariates including childhood health and financial status, to investigate the causal relationship between childlessness and health in middle age and older adulthood. Using a nationwide dataset of 1,500 Singaporeans aged 50 and above, we show that OLS underestimates the negativeeffects of childlessness on health. We find that childlessness leads to higher likelihood of poorer self-reported health and mental distress. The results are robust to a battery of sensitivity analyses, including bounding the effects by relaxing the exclusion restrictions.
Keywords
Health and Well-being, Childlessness, Instrumental Variables, Bounds, Aging
Discipline
Economics | Sociology
First Page
1
Last Page
48
Citation
HO, Christine; KIM, Dahye; RAY, Rohan; and TEERAWICHITCHAINAN, Bussarawan.
Childlessness and health in middle age and older adulthood: Evidence from Singapore. (2026). 1-48.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2842
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.