Childhood Living Conditions, Health Status, and Social Mobility: A Contribution to the Health Selection Debate

During the last few years the debate concerning the production of inequalities in health has centred around the question of ‘health selection’. Health selection refers either to a process where illness affects mobility chances, or a situation where a common background factor, such as childhood living conditions, affects both mobility and later illness. In both cases, the implied result is a greater chance for ill or potentially ill people to end up in manual classes. In this study, the effect of childhood living conditions on intergenerational mobility is analysed, as well as the effect of ill health on both inter- and intra-generational mobility. The results show that poor living conditions in childhood, measured as economic hardship during upbringing, increase the chances of being a semi-skilled or unskilled labourer, and correspondingly decrease the chances of ending up in upper and middle white-collar positions. This effect, however, is uniform across the class structure of origin. Ill health is shown to have no direct effect on either inter- or intra-generational mobility. In sum, health-related social mobility does not seem to explain class inequalities in health.