ArticlePloS one2017
Validation of a theoretically motivated approach to measuring childhood socioeconomic circumstances in the Health and Retirement Study.
Article in PloS one, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 papers.
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Who cites it
47 citing papers in PubMed, 76 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Is early childhood education associated with better midlife cognition, especially for children facing socioeconomic marginalization?PloS one · 2026Article
- Association of Early Life Risk Factors and APOE ε4 With Incident Dementia: Evidence From 14 Years of U.S. Data.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2025Article
- Cumulative loneliness and memory function among U.S. older adults: the role of depressive symptoms.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2025Article
- Differential associations between education and blood pressure by gender and race.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Food insecurity and cognitive domains among older United States adults: Findings from the health and retirement study.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Article
- More schooling is associated with lower hemoglobin A1c at the high-risk tail of the distribution: an unconditional quantile regression analysis.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Lifespan exposures to rural-urban conditions and later-life cognitive function.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Article
- Do type, timing and duration of life course non-employment differentially predict dementia risk? An application of sequence analysis.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2025Article
- Epigenetic biomarkers of socioeconomic status are associated with age-related chronic diseases and mortality in older adults.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Wealth Disparities in End-of-Life Symptom Burden Among Older Adults.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- The prevalence of lifetime trauma and association with physical and psychosocial health among adults at the end of life.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2025Article
- Impact of Vietnam-era G.I. Bill eligibility on later-life blood pressure distribution: evidence from the Vietnam draft lottery natural experiment.American journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- Foreclosure, memory decline, and dementia probability: A longitudinal cohort study.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2024Article
- Does Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status Alter Memory Change Associated with a Cancer Diagnosis? Preliminary Evidence from the US Health and Retirement Study.Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology · 2024Article
- Unpacking Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status in Children's Health Research from an Environmental Justice Perspective: A Scoping Review.Current environmental health reports · 2024Article
- First-generation college graduates have similar depressive symptoms in midlife as multi-generational college graduates.SSM - population health · 2024Article
- Food Insecurity, Memory, and Dementia Among US Adults Aged 50 Years and Older.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Heterogenous trajectories in physical, mental and cognitive health among older Americans: Roles of genetics and life course contextual factors.SSM - population health · 2023Article
- Childhood Residential Mobility and Mental and Physical Health in Later Life: Findings From the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Study.Journal of applied gerontology : the official journal of the Southern Gerontological Society · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Childhood socioeconomic status (cSES) is a powerful predictor of adult health, but its operationalization and measurement varies across studies. Using Health and Retirement Study data (HRS, which is nationally representative of community-residing United States adults aged 50+ years), we specified theoretically-motivated cSES measures, evaluated their reliability and validity, and compared their performance to other cSES indices. HRS respondent data (N = 31,169, interviewed 1992-2010) were used to construct a cSES index reflecting childhood social capital (cSC), childhood financial capital (cFC), and childhood human capital (cHC), using retrospective reports from when the respondent was <16 years (at least 34 years prior). We assessed internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha) for the scales (cSC and cFC), and construct validity, and predictive validity for all measures. Validity was assessed with hypothesized correlates of cSES (educational attainment, measured adult height, self-reported childhood health, childhood learning problems, childhood drug and alcohol problems). We then compared the performance of our validated measures with other indices used in HRS in predicting self-rated health and number of depressive symptoms, measured in 2010. Internal consistency reliability was acceptable (cSC = 0.63, cFC = 0.61). Most measures were associated with hypothesized correlates (for example, the association between educational attainment and cSC was 0.01, p < 0.0001), with the exception that measured height was not associated with cFC (p = 0.19) and childhood drug and alcohol problems (p = 0.41), and childhood learning problems (p = 0.12) were not associated with cHC. Our measures explained slightly more variability in self-rated health (adjusted R2 = 0.07 vs. <0.06) and number of depressive symptoms (adjusted R2 > 0.05 vs. < 0.04) than alternative indices. Our cSES measures use latent variable models to handle item-missingness, thereby increasing the sample size available for analysis compared to complete case approaches (N = 15,345 vs. 8,248). Adopting this type of theoretically motivated operationalization of cSES may strengthen the quality of research on the effects of cSES on health outcomes.
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