Daysal, N.M., Elder, T.E., Hellerstein, J.K. et al. (2 more authors) (2024) Parental skills, assortative mating, and the incidence of autism spectrum disorder. American Journal of Health Economics, 10 (3). ISSN 2332-3493
Abstract
We assess theories that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is heritable and transmitted through parental skills using data from Denmark. We construct parental skill measures by mapping Danish occupations to the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) survey of U.S. occupations and principal factor analysis. We find that fathers’ skills are linked to ASD in children. A one standard deviation increase in a systems and ordering skills factor correlates with a modest but statistically significant 0.041 percentagepoint (2.4%) increase in ASD incidence. There is a negative and slightly larger relationship with communication skills. ASD also is similarly correlated with Deming’s (2017) routineness and social skills measures, and fathers again play larger roles. We also find evidence consistent with Baron-Cohen (2002) whereby extreme personality traits in parents affect ASD incidence; having two parents with high systems and ordering relative to communication skills leads to a 35% higher diagnosis rate than having parents with “balanced” skills. While all of these estimates are meaningful given the costs of ASD, they only explain a small fraction of variation in ASD diagnoses. Finally, although assortative mating on skills exists, we cannot detect a role for it in recent dramatic increases in ASD.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 American Society of Health Economists. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in American Journal of Health Economics. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. This version is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. |
Keywords: | Autism Spectrum Disorder; parental transmission |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Economics (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 03 Mar 2023 17:06 |
Last Modified: | 22 Nov 2024 14:41 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The University of Chicago Press |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1086/724794 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:197012 |
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Filename: DEHIO AJHE revision 2023_01_23_Accepted version_sent dep - Chiara Orsini.pdf
Licence: CC-BY-NC 4.0
