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. 2011 Feb;72(4):591-9.
doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.11.028. Epub 2010 Dec 16.

The interaction of personal and parental education on health

Catherine E Ross  1 , John Mirowsky
Affiliations

The interaction of personal and parental education on health

Catherine E Ross et al. Soc Sci Med. 2011 Feb.

Abstract

The association between education and good health is well established, but whether the strength of the association depends on other social statuses is not. We test a theory of resource substitution which predicts a larger correlation between education and health (measured for physical impairment) for people who grew up in families with poorly-educated parents than for those whose parents were well educated. This is supported in the Aging, Status, and Sense of control (ASOC) survey, a representative national U.S. sample with data collected in 1995, 1998, and 2001. The reason that parental education matters more to people who are poorly educated themselves is due to an unhealthy lifestyle, specifically to smoking and being overweight. Finally, as the poorly educated age, the negative health effects of their parents' low educational attainment get worse.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Physical impairment by parents’ education at three levels of personal education, adjusting for age, sex, race, and marital status.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Physical impairment by parents’ education at three levels of the health lifestyle index (poor = 25th percentile, average = 50th percentile, good = 75th percentile) adjusting for age, sex, race, marital status, personal education and the interaction between personal and parental education.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Aging Vector Growth Curve Structural Equation Model for Table 3 and Figure 4.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Aging vectors of physical impairment for respondents with a high school degree or less compared to those with a college degree or higher by level of parental education (low = less than a high school degree or unknown, high = high school degree or higher). Predicted origin and 6-year change in impairment shown. The arrows represent the change vectors of every third one-year birth cohort. ASOC survey, U.S., 1995, 1998, and 2001.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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