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Brussels, February 10, 2007 Commentary on “Early childhood health, reproduction of economic inequalities and the percistance of health and mortality differentials” by A.Palloni, C.Milesi, R.White and Alyn TurnerRelationship between childhood conditions and older-age health: disease specificity, adult-life course and period effects. Vladimir M.Shkolnikovand Dmitri A. Jdanov
Outline of the commentary:- Summary of the Palloni’s study- Reflections -- Specificity in relationships between health and socioeconomic status -- Plasticity of mortality over adult ages
Summary of the Palloni’s study- Comprehensive path models linking childhood SES and health with adulthood SES and health. Accounts for a variety of possible causal links.- Use of the British Cohort Study–58 tracing men born in 1958 until their age 40- Empirical results: Up to 10% of the correlation between the parental SES and offspring SES at age 30 can be explained by the childhood’s health selection. Childhood health selection can explain up to 10% of relationship between SES at age 30 and health at age 40.
Summary of the Palloni’s studyStrengths:- General and flexible character of the two models- Meaningful empirical resultsWeaknesses:- Cohort attrition with time- Insufficiency of the data- Non-unique model
Reflection 1: Specificity in relationships between health and SES.The table is reproduced from Leon (2001)
Reflection 2: Plasticity of mortality trajectories over adult ages Age-specific ratios of mortality rates between successive female cohorts in England and Wales
Reflection 2: Plasticity of mortality trajectories over adult ages Age-specific ratios of mortality rates between successive male cohorts in Sweden
Reflection 2: Plasticity of mortality trajectories over adult ages Unexpected widening of the black-white gap in the US male life expectancy in the second half of the 1980s and its age- and cause- specific components
Reflection 2: Plasticity of mortality trajectories over adult ages Profound change of cohort survival in very old cohorts in East Germany