Social mobility and health: Evidence from the 1958 British birth cohort

Empirical research on the association between social mobility and health has yielded inconsistent findings due to methodological limitations and often small sample sizes in exiting studies. Using data from the 1958 British National Child Development Study and applying Diagonal Reference Models, this paper examines the association between intergenerational and intragenerational mobility with mental, physical, and behavioural health outcomes at age 50. A central finding is that social mobility is less strongly associated with health than existing theories suggest. Instead, the health of socially mobile individuals is largely shaped by both their class of origin and destination. Psychological wellbeing, psychological distress, and life satisfaction align most strongly with destination class, whereas physical health and health behaviours remain closely tied to origin class. While the overall patterns are similar for women and men, women's physical health and health behaviours show stronger associations with class of origin than men's. The only exception is among women experiencing upward intragenerational mobility, whose self-rated health improves by 0.10 points on a 0-4 scale (95% CI: 0.01, 0.20) beyond what would be expected based on their origin and destination class.