ArticleSocial indicators research2022
Childhood Circumstances and Health Inequality in Old Age: Comparative Evidence from China and the USA.
Article in Social indicators research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Childhood living conditions as predictors of self-rated health status in middle-aged and older adults: Evidence from a machine learning analysis in 27 high-income countries.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Inequality of Opportunity in Body Mass: Evidence From Australia.Health economics · 2025Article
- Equal Opportunity and Luck: Empirical Exploration Using the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.Social indicators research · 2025Article
- Early-Life Circumstances and Cross-Country Disparities in Cognition Among Older Populations - China, the US, and the EU, 2008-2018.China CDC weekly · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
This paper estimates the extent to which childhood circumstances contribute to health inequality in old age and evaluates the importance of major domains of childhood circumstances to health inequalities in the USA and China. We link two waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study in 2013 and 2015 with the newly released 2014 Life History Survey, and two waves of the Health and Retirement Study in 2014 and 2016 with the newly released 2015 Life History Mail Survey in the USA, to quantify health inequality due to childhood circumstances for which they have little control. Using the Shapley value decomposition approach, we show that childhood circumstances may explain 7-16 and 14-30% of health inequality in old age in China and the USA, respectively. Specifically, the contribution of childhood circumstances to health inequality is larger in the USA than in China for self-rated health, mental health, and physical health. Examining domains of childhood circumstance, regional and rural/urban status contribute more to health inequality in China, while family socioeconomic status contributes more to health inequality in the USA. Our findings support the value of a life course approach in identifying the key determinants of health in old age. Distinguishing sources of health inequality and rectifying inequality due to early childhood circumstances should be the basis of policy promoting health equity.
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