Socioeconomic inequality in health in the British household panel: Tests of the social causation, health selection and the indirect selection hypothesis using dynamic fixed effects panel models

Foverskov, Else; Holm, Anders

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.12.021

Cited by 33 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…However, it is theoretically possible that these factors exist, with their effects only materializing later in life; here, too, we see very little correlation between health and wealth net of previous cross-lagged effects that are taken into account when the model estimates the correlations. Previous studies that use a different design and a different definition of indirect selection come to contrary conclusions: Foverskov and Holm, for example, (2016) begin observing the relationship between SES and health at age 30, find little or no mutual effects, and conclude that health inequalities can be explained by indirect selection, which they define as everything before age 30. An advantage of our study is that we start measuring SES and health as early as possible in the life course, thus attributing as much as possible of their interrelation to either social causation or health selection, instead of using indirect selection as a black box or residual model that absorbs all interactions before observations began.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The reciprocal relationship between material factors and health in the life course: evidence from SHARE and ELSA

2018

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The widely established health differences between people with greater economic resources and those with fewer resources can be attributed to both social causation (material factors affecting health) and health selection (health affecting material wealth). Each of these pathways may have different intensities at different ages, because the sensitivity of health to a lack of material wealth and the degree to which health can influence economic resources may change. We study the relative importance, in terms of explanatory power, of social causation and health selection, comparing the transitions from childhood to adulthood and from adulthood to old age. We use retrospective survey data from ten European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARELIFE, n = 18,734) and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA, n = 6117), and structural equations models in a cross-lagged panel design. Material wealth and health depend on their prior status, wealth more so than health. In the transition from childhood to adulthood, social causation and health selection are equally important: the standardized coefficients for men in SHARE are 0.07 and 0.06, respectively, i.e. one standard deviation increase in material wealth in childhood is associated with a 0.07 standard deviation increase in adult health. In the transition from adulthood to old age, social causation is more important than health selection (0.52 vs. 0.01), across gender and data sets. Both pathways contribute to the creation of health inequalities—however, their relative importance changes with age, which is important for understanding how health inequalities develop and how policies can address them.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s10433-018-0458-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The reciprocal relationship between material factors and health in the life course: evidence from SHARE and ELSA

2018

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“…He finds no mediating effects of changing household income or eligibility for unemployment benefits. Additionally, Foverskov and Holm (2016) find no effects of household income on health in a regression that accounts for reverse causality. However, we are not aware of any research on income as a mechanism explaining health outcomes of unemployment that also accounts for potential direct selection effects.…”

Section: H1: There Is a Negative Causal Effect Of Unemployment On Healthmentioning

confidence: 87%

What explains the negative effect of unemployment on health? An analysis accounting for reverse causality

Krug

Eberl

2018

Research in Social Stratification and Mobility

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The unemployed are often in poorer health than their employed counterparts. This cross-sectional correlation is often attributed to a causal effect of unemployment on health. Resent research analyzing longitudinal data, however, often supports alternative explanations, such as spurious correlation and/or selection of unhealthy workers into unemployment (i.e., reverse causality). In this paper, we apply a dynamic panel data estimator (system GMM) to account for both unobserved confounders and reverse causality. Despite some evidence for health selection, we still find strong support for the causality thesis. Furthermore, we show that the adverse health effect is partially explained by the loss of self-perceived social status due to unemployment but not by the loss of household income or social contacts.

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“…Our findings suggest that typical trajectory membership is influenced by other factors than depressiveness in youth. This suggests that future research should focus on the importance of indirect selection processes as concluded by Foreskov et al’s analyses of the British household panel [76]. A next step is to analyse mental health consequences of typical trajectory membership while taking both inter-generational and intra-generational social reproduction into account.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of social position and depressive symptoms in adolescence for life-course trajectories of education and work: a cohort study

et al. 2016

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BackgroundWhile a vast amount of studies confirm the social reproduction of class and status from one generation to the next, less is known about the role of health in the child generation for these processes. Research has shown that particularly mental distress in adolescence is important for future life chances. This study aimed to examine the importance of parental socioeconomic position and depressive symptoms in youth for life-course trajectories of education and labour market attachment among men and women.MethodsBased on four waves of questionnaire data from the Northern Swedish Cohort (n = 1,001), consisting of individuals born in 1965, three steps of gender-separate analyses were undertaken. First, the individual trajectories of education and labour market attachment from age 18 to 42 were mapped through sequence analysis. Second, cluster analysis was used to identify typical trajectories. Third, two indicators of parental socioeconomic position – occupational class and employment status – and depressive symptoms at age 16 were used in multinomial regression analyses to predict adult life-course trajectories.ResultsFour typical trajectories were identified for men, of which three were characterised by stable employment and various lengths of education, and the fourth reflected a more unstable situation. Among women, five trajectories emerged, characterised by more instability compared to men. Low parental occupational class and unemployment were significantly associated with a higher risk of ending up in less advantaged trajectories for men while, for women, this was only the case for occupational class. Youth levels of depressive symptoms did not significantly differ across the trajectories.ConclusionsThis study found support for the intergenerational reproduction of social position, particularly when measured in terms of parental occupational class. Youth depressive symptoms did not show clear differences across types of trajectories, subsequently impeding such symptoms to trigger any selection processes. While this could be a consequence of the specific framework of the current study, it may also suggest that depressive symptoms in youth are not a root cause for the more complex processes through which how social position develops across life. The possible impact of welfare and labour market policies is discussed.

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Socioeconomic inequality in health in the British household panel: Tests of the social causation, health selection and the indirect selection hypothesis using dynamic fixed effects panel models

Cited by 33 publications

References 34 publications

The reciprocal relationship between material factors and health in the life course: evidence from SHARE and ELSA

The reciprocal relationship between material factors and health in the life course: evidence from SHARE and ELSA

What explains the negative effect of unemployment on health? An analysis accounting for reverse causality

The role of social position and depressive symptoms in adolescence for life-course trajectories of education and work: a cohort study

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