Intragenerational social mobility and cause-specific premature mortality

Area of Science:

• Sociology
• Public Health
• Epidemiology

Background:

• Social mobility, the movement between social classes, may influence health outcomes.
• Previous research has not fully explored the short-term mortality effects of intragenerational social mobility during working years.
• Health selection and changes in well-being are potential mechanisms linking social mobility and mortality.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the short-term relationship between intragenerational social mobility and mortality among working individuals.
• To determine if this relationship varies across different causes of death.
• To examine the role of health selection in the social mobility-mortality link.

Main Methods:

• Utilized Swedish register data from 1996 to 2012, observing individuals up to age 65.
• Employed discrete-time event-history analyses to control for time-varying covariates and social class at origin and destination.
• Analyzed mortality across various causes of death in relation to social mobility status.

Main Results:

• Upward social mobility was associated with lower mortality from cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), ischemic heart disease (IHD), and suicide in men.
• Upward mobility was linked to reduced suicide risk only in women.
• Downward social mobility correlated with increased cancer mortality (overall and smoking-related) for both men and women.

Conclusions:

• Findings suggest a link between social mobility and mortality, potentially explained by health selection.
• Downward mobility's association with higher cancer mortality supports health selection, as cancer is a chronic illness.
• The broad association between upward mobility and lower mortality in men may indicate positive health selection into higher social strata.