Intergenerational reproduction and self-rated health in Canada

Intergenerational processes in which the socioeconomic status of middle- and upper-class parents is reproduced in their children have been extensively documented by social scientists. We mobilized a unique dataset, the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults (LISA) linked to income data from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), to investigate the relevance of intergenerational socioeconomic reproduction for inequalities in self-rated health in a national sample of Canadians aged 25 to 50. We found strong intergenerational elasticities implicating both parental education and parental family income in the acquisition of both personal education and personal family income. Parental education was not significantly associated with self-rated health. Parental family income was significantly associated with self-rated health among women only, partly explained by the socioeconomic status of the women themselves. These results suggest that intergenerational reproduction plays a small role in the generation of high levels of self-rated health among Canadian women but not among Canadian men.