Socioeconomic status and physical health, how are they related? An empirical study based on twins reared apart and twins reared together

Paul Lichtenstein, Jennifer R. Harris, Nancy L. Pedersen and G.E. McClearn

Social Science & Medicine, 1993, vol. 36, issue 4, 441-450

Abstract: This investigation used the powerful combined twin and adoption design to assess the validity of three different hypotheses--social causation, childhood experiences, and health selection--on the origin of the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and health. The sample contains 99 pairs of monozygotic twins reared apart, 166 pairs of monozygotic twins reared together, 238 pairs of dizygotic twins reared apart, and 221 pairs of dizygotic twins reared together, who completed questionnaire items concerning their SES and health status. Genetic effects, environmental effects unique to the individual, as well as environmental effects shared by twins were involved in mediating the associations between SES and health. However, the relative importance of these effects varied for the different associations depending on the measures of health and SES respectively. The results indicate that social causation, childhood experiences, and health selection may all be important for the association between SES and health. It is argued that these hypotheses are not contradictory, rather the relationship between the complex dimensions SES and health may be explained by several different causes.

Keywords: social; causation; health; selection; socioeconomic; status; health; inequalities; twins; reared; apart (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(93)90406-T
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:36:y:1993:i:4:p:441-450

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

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 ().