Intergenerational Mobility in Relative Educational Attainment and Health-Related Behaviours

Alexi Gugushvili,Martin Mckee,Lawrence King,Aytalina Azarova,Katarzyna Doniec,Darja Irdam,Michael Murphy

doi:10.1007/s11205-017-1834-7

Abstract

Research on intergenerational social mobility and health-related behaviours yields mixed findings. Depending on the direction of mobility and the type of mechanisms involved, we can expect positive or negative association between intergenerational mobility and health-related behaviours. Using data from a retrospective cohort study, conducted in more than 100 towns across Belarus, Hungary and Russia, we fit multilevel mixed-effects Poisson regressions with two measures of health-related behaviours: binge drinking and smoking. The main explanatory variable, intergenerational educational mobility is operationalised in terms of relative intergenerational educational trajectories based on the prevalence of specified qualifications in parental and offspring generations. In each country the associations between intergenerational educational mobility, binge drinking and smoking was examined with incidence rate ratios and predicted probabilities, using multiply imputed dataset for missing data and controlling for important confounders of health-related behaviours. We find that intergenerational mobility in relative educational attainment has varying association with binge drinking and smoking and the strength and direction of these effects depend on the country of analysis, the mode of mobility, the gender of respondents and the type of health-related behaviour. Along with accumulation and Falling from Grace hypotheses of the consequences of intergenerational mobility, our findings suggest that upward educational mobility in certain instances might be linked to improved health-related behaviours.

Highlights

For most of the post-war period, parents in western countries could expect their children to far better than they did
We find that intergenerational mobility in relative educational attainment has varying association with binge drinking and smoking and the strength and direction of these effects depend on the country of analysis, the mode of mobility, the gender of respondents and the type of health-related behaviour
We found that intergenerational educational mobility, measured by means of the prevalence of specified qualifications in parental and offspring generations, has varying association with binge drinking and smoking and the strength and direction of these effects depend on the country of analysis, the mode of mobility, the gender of respondents and the type of health-related behaviour

Summary

Introduction

For most of the post-war period, parents in western countries could expect their children to far better than they did. Data from the USA show that, while 90% of children born in the 1940s earned more than their parents, that figure is falling rapidly and is only 50% for those born in the 1980s (Chetty et al 2017) This has many implications for society, especially when combined with other factors, such as housing prices and pension changes, that mean that younger people are accumulating wealth at a much lower level in the past (D’Arcy and Gardiner 2017). While there is sociological research on the trends and correlates of intergenerational social mobility in post-socialist contexts and public health literature on the correlates of drinking and smoking, virtually no studies we are aware of enquire into the links between intergenerational social mobility and health-related behaviours

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