Primary Submission Category: Life-course/developmental
Social mobility and health over the life course: Using Integrative Data Analysis to uncover self-rated health trajectories by social mobility status over the life course.
Authors: Ekaterina Baldina,
Presenting Author: Ekaterina Baldina*
This study aims to understand the association of life-course intergenerational social mobility with self-rated health in the United States. Existing research highlights that not only individual’s education but also parental education and intergenerational mobility contribute to health benefits. For instance, upwardly mobile and stable high-level socioeconomic status individuals have higher cognitive function (Shi et al. 2024) and lower mortality risks (Tran et al. 2024). The positive effects of upward mobility also extend to the adjacent generations: parents of upwardly mobile children had higher levels of well-being (Wang 2024), and children of upwardly mobile mothers were more likely to have higher birth weights (Kappelman et al. 2025). Conversely, downwardly mobile individuals are found to have reduced brain volume (Liu et al. 2024), higher levels of psychological distress (Vanzella-Yang and Veenstra 2024), and greater loneliness (Mugiyama, Kwon and Tabuchi 2024). However, some evidence points out that upward mobility might be detrimental to some dimensions of health. For example, upward mobility in low-opportunity contexts produces high distress, chronic conditions, and the adoption of unhealthy behaviors, such as alcohol use (Zang and Tian 2024).
At what point in life does social mobility direction bring benefits or disadvantages to health? In this project, I specify and test a novel model exploring the differences in relationships between social mobility and health at different life course stages—such as young adulthood, middle age, and older adulthood. Additionally, I employ a Mobility Contrast Model to estimate a heterogeneous effect of intergenerational social mobility on health. This method is designed to assess the mobility effects of different directions and magnitudes, which was impossible with other models (Luo 2022)…