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

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.