This study explores the relationship between parental educational similarity—educational concordance (homogamy) or discordance (heterogamy)—and children’s health outcomes. Its contribution is threefold. First and foremost, I use longitudinal data on children’s health outcomes tracking children from age 1 to 15, thus being able to assess whether the relationship changes at key life-course and developmental stages of children. This is an important addition to the relevant literature, where the focus is solely on outcomes at birth. Second, I look at different health outcomes, namely height-for-age (HFA) and BMI-for-age (BFA) z-scores, alongside their dichotomized counterparts, stunting and thinness. Third, I conduct the same set of analyses in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam, thus providing multi-context evidence from countries at different levels of development and with different socio-economic characteristics and gender dynamics. Results reveal important heterogeneity across contexts. In Ethiopia and India, parental educational homogamy is associated with worse health outcomes in infancy and childhood, while associations are positive in Peru and, foremost, Vietnam. Complementary estimates from matching techniques show that these associations tend to fade after age 1, except in Vietnam, where the positive relationship persists through adolescence, thus supporting the homogamy-benefit hypothesis not only at birth, but also across the early life course. Insights from this study contribute to the inequality debate on the intergenerational transmission of advantage and disadvantage and shed additional light on the relationship between early-life conditions and later-life outcomes in critical periods of children’s lives.

本研究探讨了父母教育相似性（教育一致性（同婚）或教育不一致（异婚））与儿童健康结果之间的关系。它的贡献是三倍的。首先，我使用跟踪 1 至 15 岁儿童的儿童健康结果纵向数据，从而能够评估这种关系是否在儿童的关键生命历程和发育阶段发生变化。这是对相关文献的重要补充，其重点仅在于出生时的结果。其次，我研究了不同的健康结果，即年龄别身高 (HFA) 和年龄别体重指数 (BFA) z-分数，以及他们的二分法对应物，发育迟缓和瘦弱。第三，我在埃塞俄比亚、印度、秘鲁和越南进行了相同的分析，从而提供了来自不同发展水平、不同社会经济特征和性别动态的国家的多背景证据。结果揭示了跨环境的重要异质性。在埃塞俄比亚和印度，父母教育同婚与婴儿期和儿童期较差的健康状况有关，而在秘鲁，尤其是越南，这种关联是积极的。匹配技术的补充估计表明，这些关联在 1 岁后趋于消退，但越南除外，在越南，这种正相关关系一直持续到青春期，因此支持同婚受益假说不仅在出生时，而且在整个生命早期。这项研究的见解有助于关于优势和劣势代际传递的不平等辩论，并进一步阐明儿童生命关键时期的早期生活状况与后期生活结果之间的关系。