Socioeconomic and Ethnic Inequality in Health and Intergenerational Mobility (HEALTHMOBILITY)

Economic inequality is growing in Norway and other high-income countries, and large-scale immigration is changing the demographic and socioeconomic landscape of these societies. As these shifts occur, there's a rising interest in understanding how various forms of inequality persist across generations. While there's extensive research on social mobility, there's relatively less focus on how health - an important aspect of an individual’s human capital - is transferred from parents to children, and how this might influence a child's future education and career. In our project, HEALTHMOBILITY, we aim to investigate this underexplored area. We will study how health status is inherited across generations, the influence of early-life health disparities on adult achievements, and any variations in these processes between children of immigrant and native parents. Additionally, we'll examine how the relationship between socioeconomic status and health status has evolved historically. To do this, we'll use extensive Norwegian data, including records of health service use, self-reported health measures, and key socioeconomic and demographic characteristics.

Economic inequality is on the rise in Norway and other high-income countries, while large-scale immigration is also changing the demographic and socioeconomic structure of these societies. In the wake of widening economic disparities and ethnic inequality, there is growing concern among social scientists and policy makers that various dimensions of inequality are becoming increasingly persistent across generations. Knowing to what extent inequality is perpetuated within families and within broader social contexts is crucial since most would agree that opportunities in life should not be determined by which family a child is born into. Despite a vast literature on intergenerational mobility and children’s prospects for moving up the socioeconomic ladder, there is little research on the intergenerational transmission of health status and its role in the transmission of socioeconomic status from parents to children. This is unfortunate, as health is increasingly acknowledged as an essential part of individuals’ human capital, with important consequences for individuals outcomes in education and the labor market. In HEALTHMOBILITY we aim to study to what extent (1) health status is passed down through generations and its relation to socioeconomic mobility, (2) the causal impact of early-life health disparities on adult attainments, (3) to what extent these processes vary between children of immigrant and native parents, and (4) how the relationship between socioeconomic status and health status have evolved historically. Our aim is to unpack how mechanisms related to intergenerational transmission of health inequality contributes to socioeconomic and ethnic disparities in educational and labor market attainments. We will use Norwegian data from population-wide administrative registers and large-scale surveys, with detailed information on health service use, self-reported measures of health, and key socioeconomic and demographic characteristics to address these issues