The Link Between Intergenerational Social Mobility of Cohorts And Individual Self-Rated Health: A Multi-Country Analysis

Jacinth J. X. Tan (), Gregory T. H. Tan and Faith A. Wee
Additional contact information
Jacinth J. X. Tan: Singapore Management University
Gregory T. H. Tan: Singapore Management University
Faith A. Wee: Singapore Management University

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2025, vol. 180, issue 2, No 3, 619-641

Abstract: Abstract This research examined the potential health consequences of increased opportunities for social mobility. Specifically, we used indices of intergenerational social mobility of cohorts—the average level of change in economic status relative to one’s parents experienced across individuals within a cohort—as proxy measures of individuals’ exposure to opportunities for social mobility and investigated links to their self-rated health (SRH). We combined recent multi-country data on cohort social mobility from the World Bank with multi-country individual SRH data from the World Values Survey waves six (Ncountries = 44, Nrespondents = 48,955) and seven (Ncountries = 41, Nrespondents = 37,051). Multilevel modeling analyses revealed that at the aggregate, SRH had negative or non-significant links to respondents’ absolute and relative cohort mobility, controlling for age, sex, education level and perceived income. There were also significant variations in the relationships. At the individual level, absolute and relative cohort mobility of respondents largely predicted lower SRH among those higher in current economic status. Analyses of country-level variables revealed that higher relative cohort mobility predicted lower SRH primarily in high-income countries. These initial findings from multi-country data suggest significant variation in whether increased opportunities for social mobility may come at the cost of individual health.

Keywords: Social mobility; Health inequalities; Self-rated health; Multilevel modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-025-03691-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:soinre:v:180:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s11205-025-03691-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-025-03691-x

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().