Abstract
This article examines the impact of early life adversity on health inequality from a life course perspective. We develop a dual interaction model that considers how both the frequency as well as the duration of early life adversity might shape an individual's health. Analyzing data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS, 2011-2014), we show that not only does early life adversity have a direct effect on an individual's health, but throughout the life course it also produces cumulative disadvantages through worsening the individual's life conditions such as less education, lower social-economic status, and less job security. The combination of the frequency of adversity experience and the length of exposure creates an exponential effect on poor health, contributing to the persistence of health inequality in contemporary Chinese society.
Highlights
Health inequality is an important dimension of social inequality
We examine the impact of early life adversity on health inequality from a life course perspective
The dual interaction between the counts and the duration of early life adversity contributes to the persistence of health inequality in contemporary Chinese society
Summary
Health inequality is an important dimension of social inequality. While the overall health of humankind has dramatically improved since the end of the World War II, during the time health inequalities among different individuals, groups, and countries have become more widespread (Smith and Morris 1994; Levine et al 2015). They have combined life course theory with cumulative advantage/disadvantage theory, thereby emphasizing how early life adversity and events make people face high risks, how beneficial experiences create opportunities, how the interaction between these two processes leads to a specific process of inequality, and how the impact on individual’s different development trajectories occurs along with increasing age (Dannefer 2003).
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