Risky consumption and intergenerational mobility: a research program in a family context

The objective of this document is to propose a research program that links risky consumption and inter/generational mobility, in the context of the family. Evidence on risky consumption for Spanish individuals reveals that, among other things, reduction of drug use by both parents and friends implies a fall in the rates of individual drug use. Strong evidence has been found to support the hypothesis that health-risk behaviors of fathers and mothers influence the corresponding health-risk behaviors of their offspring, in this way proving the importance of the inter-generational context. We now propose to extend this relationship between risky consumption and inter-generational mobility to the family context. To that end, we base this work on the general framework of the Economics of the Family to propose some ideas about interrelations between family members with respect to the relationship between our two topics of interest.