Social mobility and health in European countries: Does welfare regime type matter?

Inês Campos-Matos and Ichiro Kawachi

Social Science & Medicine, 2015, vol. 142, issue C, 241-248

Abstract: Health inequalities pose an important public health challenge in European countries, for which increased social mobility has been suggested as a cause. We sought to describe how the relationship between health inequalities and social mobility varies among welfare regime types in the European region. Data from six rounds of the European Social Survey was analyzed using multilevel statistical techniques, stratified by welfare regime type, including 237,535 individuals from 136 countries. Social mobility among individuals was defined according to the discrepancy between parental and offspring educational attainment. For each welfare regime type, the association between social mobility and self-rated health was examined using odds ratios and risk differences, controlling for parental education. Upwardly mobile individuals had between 23 and 44% lower odds of reporting bad or very bad self-rated health when compared to those who remained stable. On an absolute scale, former USSR countries showed the biggest and only significant differences for upward movement, while Scandinavian countries showed the smallest. Downward social mobility tended to be associated with worse health, but the results were less consistent. Upward social mobility is associated with worse health in all European welfare regime types. However, in Scandinavian countries the association of upward mobility was smaller, suggesting that the Nordic model is more effective in mitigating the impact of social mobility on health and/or of health on mobility.

Keywords: Europe; Welfare regimes; Social mobility; Self-rated health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953615300873
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:142:y:2015:i:c:p:241-248

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.08.035

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().