There is a growing interest in understanding how the experience of socioeconomic status (SES) adversity across the life course may accumulate to negatively affect the functioning of biological regulatory systems important to functioning and health in later adulthood. The goal of the present analyses was to examine whether greater life course SES adversity experience would be associated with higher scores on a multi-system allostatic load (AL) index of physiological function in adulthood. Data for these analyses are from 1,008 participants (92.2% White) from the Biomarker Substudy of the Study of Midlife in the US (MIDUS). Multiple indicators of SES adversity in childhood (parent educational attainment, welfare status, financial situation) and two points in adulthood (educational attainment, household income, difficulty paying bills, availability of money to meet basic needs, current financial situation) were used to construct SES adversity measures for each life course phase. An AL score was constructed using information on 24 biomarkers from 7 different physiological systems (sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, cardiovascular, lipid metabolism, glucose metabolism, inflammatory immune activity). Analyses indicate higher AL as a function of greater SES adversity at each phase of, and cumulatively across, the life course. Associations were only moderately attenuated when accounting for a wide array of health status, behavioral and psychosocial factors. Findings suggest that SES adversity experience may cumulate across the life course to have a negative impact on multiple biological systems in adulthood. An important aim of future research is the replication of current findings in this predominantly White sample in more ethnically diverse populations.

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Using a very rich set of health indicators that include both self-reported measures and biomarkers from the CHARLS national baseline data, we document health conditions of the Chinese mid-aged and elderly, examine correlations between these health outcomes and socio-economic status and compare these associations by gender, hukou status and region. As expected, we find that Chinese mid-aged and elderly are facing challenges from chronic diseases including hypertension. Overnutrition has become a bigger problem than undernutrition, particularly for women, reflected in a higher rate of overweight compared to underweight. Disability rates are also high, especially for female, rural and inland respondents, who also report suffering from more pain than male, urban and coastal ones. In general, education and PCE tend to be positively correlated with better health outcomes, as it is in other countries. For PCE the relationship is very nonlinear. At low levels of PCE, there exists a positive correlation with better health outcomes, while for higher levels of PCE the relationship flattens out. Unmeasured community influences turn out to be highly important, much more so than one usually finds in other countries. We also find a large degree of under-diagnosis of hypertension, a major health problems that afflicts the aged, although less large than in some other developing countries. This implies that the current health system is still not well prepared to address the rapid aging of the Chinese population.

This document describes the design and implementation of dried blood spot assays for high sensitivity Creactive protein (hs CRP) undertaken as part of IFLS4. The Indonesia Family Life Survey is a continuing longitudinal socioeconomic and health survey. It is based on a sample of households representing about 83% of the Indonesian population living in 13 of the nation's 26 provinces in 1993. The survey collects data on individual respondents, their families, their households, the communities in which they live, and the health and education facilities they use. The first wave (IFLS1) was administered in 1993 to individuals living in 7,224 households. IFLS2 sought to reinterview the same respondents four years later. A follow-up survey (IFLS2+) was conducted in 1998 with 25% of the sample to measure the immediate impact of the economic and political crisis in Indonesia. The next wave, IFLS3, was fielded on the full sample in 2000. IFLS4 was fielded in late 2007 and early 2008 on the same 1993 households and their splitoffs; 13,535 households and 44,103 individuals were interviewed.