Do you want to avoid the hassle of traveling with your printed poster? IAPHS2026 is pleased to make poster printing available to you through our supplier PosterSessionOnline. Your poster will be professionally reviewed, printed and shipped directly to Portland and you will be able to pick it up from the Poster desk. Click here to learn more.
Primary Submission Category: Structural factors
Unequal beginnings, Unequal pain: Three approaches to how Welfare State moderate the relationship between childhood SES and later-life pain.
Authors: Rui Huang, Yuhang Li,
Presenting Author: Rui Huang*
Pain is highly prevalent among older adults in Europe, and childhood disadvantage is a strong risk factor. Yet, evidence remains limited on whether welfare-state contexts buffer the long-run translation of childhood socioeconomic disadvantage into pain. We linked individual-level data from Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (2013-2021; N= 58,529) with country-level indicators from European System of Integrated Social Protection Statistics and Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset 2 to assess how welfare-state arrangements shape childhood socioeconomic status (cSES) disparities in moderate/severe pain among adults aged 50–95. Welfare-state arrangements were examined through three complementary lenses: welfare regimes (regime approach), social protection spending (social protection approach), and policy generosity (institutional approach). Using Poisson generalized estimating equations with cluster-robust standard errors, we tested whether cSES predicts later-life pain, whether cSES disparities change with age, and whether welfare-state characteristics moderate both the level and age pattern of the cSES–pain association. Results show a strong cSES gradient in later-life pain, and the disadvantages associated with low cSES appear consistent and persistent with age. Cross-national patterns indicate that cSES-pain associations are weakest in Scandinavian countries, stronger in Southern and Eastern European countries, and strongest in Israel. cSES disparities by age persistent in Scandinavian and Eastern countries, shrink in Bismarckain and Southern countries (with different underlying substantive meanings), and widen in Israel. Higher social protection expenditures and more generous welfare policies are generally associated with smaller cSES-related pain gaps and weaker amplification of childhood disadvantage with aging. This study underscores the buffering impacts of sociopolitical contexts.