This paper investigates the intergenerational persistence of health across time and region as well as across the distribution of maternal health. It uses comparable micro-data on as many as 2.24 million children born of about 0.6 million mothers in 38 developing countries in the 31 year period, 1970-2000. Mother's health is indicated by her height, BMI and anemia status. Child health is indicated by mortality risk and anthropometric failure. We nd a positive relationship between maternal and child health across indicators and highlight non-linearities in these relationships. Averaging across the sample, persistence shows a considerable decline over time. Disaggregation shows that the decline is only signicant in Latin America. Persistence has remained largely constant in Asia and has risen in Africa.