Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
11-2025
Abstract
This research examined the potential health consequences of increased opportunities for social mobility. Specifically, we used indices of intergenerational social mobility of cohorts—the average level of change in economic status relative to one’s parents experienced across individuals within a cohort—as proxy measures of individuals’ exposure to opportunities for social mobility and investigated links to their self-rated health (SRH). We combined recent multi-country data on cohort social mobility from the World Bank with multi-country individual SRH data from the World Values Survey waves six (Ncountries=44, Nrespondents=48,955) and seven (Ncountries=41, Nrespondents=37,051). Multilevel modeling analyses revealed that at the aggregate, SRH had negative or non-significant links to respondents’ absolute and relative cohort mobility, controlling for age, sex, education level and perceived income. There were also significant variations in the relationships. At the individual level, absolute and relative cohort mobility of respondents largely predicted lower SRH among those higher in current economic status. Analyses of country-level variables revealed that higher relative cohort mobility predicted lower SRH primarily in high-income countries. These initial findings from multi-country data suggest significant variation in whether increased opportunities for social mobility may come at the cost of individual health.
Keywords
social mobility, health inequalities, self-rated health, multilevel modeling
Discipline
Social Psychology | Social Psychology and Interaction
Research Areas
Psychology
Publication
Social Indicators Research
Volume
180
Issue
2
First Page
619
Last Page
641
ISSN
0303-8300
Identifier
10.1007/s11205-025-03691-x
Publisher
Springer
Citation
TAN, Jacinth J. X., HNG, Gregory T. H., & WEE, Faith A..(2025). The link between intergenerational social mobility of cohorts and individual self-rated health: A multi-country analysis.. Social Indicators Research, 180(2), 619-641.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/4226
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-025-03691-x