Getting the band back together, Cluster faculty past and present and a Doc student (Link, Susser, March, Kezios, Lovasi, Rundle, and Suglia) just published new work in Social Science and Medicine. This is the first paper from the Child Health and Development Study – Disparities Project which seeks to understand how health disparities are reconstituted across generations and through the life course. The project uses data from the Child Health and Development Study on mothers and offspring recruited in California’s Bay Area between 1959 and 1967 with follow-up of the offspring at age ~50. The mothers were originally assessed during pregnancy and then follow-up exams of offspring, along with in-person interviews with mothers, occurred at offspring ages 5, 9-11, 15-17. This first paper shows that disparities in self-rated health by race and socioeconomic status observed in the mothers are replicated in the offspring at age 50 years. The data analyses suggest that pathways related to the offspring’s acquisition of socioeconomic status are responsible for the transmission of the disparity in self-rated health across generations.
Percent fair∖poor self-rated health by quartiles of childhood socioeconomic status: Mothers when offspring are 15-17, offspring at 15-17 and offspring as adults.
