Abstract
This paper aims to investigate heterogeneous income changes and whether the income trajectories moderate effects of early socioeconomic disadvantage on health in late middle age. The sample was restricted to 9,056 middle-aged adults from the Health and Retirement Study (1998-2010). Through a latent class growth analysis, six patterns of income changes were identified: constantly low, constantly moderate, constantly high & increasing, high to low, moderate to high, and high to moderate. The Constantly low group more frequently displayed depressive symptoms if exposed to early socioeconomic disadvantage and Constantly low income mobility. Individuals who experienced early socioeconomic disadvantage and a downward income mobility in middle age tended to have multiple chronic conditions while there was no moderating effect of income changes for mobility functional limitations. These findings suggest that not all health outcomes are programmed in early life: Disadvantage can be somewhat alleviated through stable and better later-life economic status
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
