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. 2022 Oct 27;22(1):279.
doi: 10.1186/s12874-022-01757-9.

Conditional wealth to estimate association of wealth mobility with health and human capital in low- and middle-income country cohorts

Jithin Sam Varghese  1 , Clive Osmond  2 , Aryeh D Stein  3
Affiliations

Conditional wealth to estimate association of wealth mobility with health and human capital in low- and middle-income country cohorts

Jithin Sam Varghese et al. BMC Med Res Methodol. .

Abstract

Temporally harmonized asset indices allow the study of changes in relative wealth (mean, variance, social mobility) over time and its association with adult health and human capital in cohort studies. Conditional measures are the unexplained residuals of an indicator regressed on its past values. Using such measures, previously used to study the relative importance of key life stages for anthropometric growth, we can identify specific life stages during which changes in relative wealth are important for adult health in longitudinal studies. We discuss the assumptions, strengths and limitations of this methodology as applied to relative wealth. We provide an illustrative example using a publicly-available longitudinal dataset and show how relative wealth changes at different life stages are differentially associated with body mass index in adulthood.

Keywords: Asset index; Conditional wealth; Life course epidemiology; Social mobility; Socioeconomic position.

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Conflict of interest statement

None declared.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Conceptual framework for wealth and conditional wealth in longitudinal studies Wt are the measures of wealth, Y is the health outcome, Xt are the covariates associated with wealth like schooling and employment, Ct are conditional wealth measures or the magnitude of change in relative position. Panel (A) is the traditional framework for study of wealth with Y. In panel (B), we conceptualize conditional wealth (Ct), an extraneous contribution to current wealth beyond past measures of wealth. Wt and Ct may also be predicted by other unmeasured variables (Ut) that are not confounders of the wealth-outcome relationship. Xt may be predicted by past measures of wealth also
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Examples of changes in wealth at two time points for scenarios of mean, variance and relative position The different shapes represent wealth of individuals at two different time points. Additional examples are available in Supplementary File 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Joint distribution of temporally harmonized wealth at different study waves (n = 1581). All correlations reported are Pearson correlation coefficients. Figure created using GGally v2.0.0
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Pooled and sex-stratified association of conditional wealth with body mass index (kg/m2) in 2009 for Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey 1983–2009 (n = 1503) Values are estimate and 95% confidence interval from linear regression. All measures (wealth in 1983 and conditional wealth) were in the same units as harmonized wealth. We adjusted for maternal schooling, maternal age, birth order, rural residence (1983 to 2009), attained schooling, and formal employment (in 2009). Pregnant women (n = 77) were excluded from the analysis. BMI missing for one individual (n = 1). Coefficients for all variables are reported in Supplementary Table 3
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