To examine the associations between income and education and three markers of inflammation: interleukin-6 (IL-6), C-reactive protein (CRP), and fibrinogen. Socioeconomic status is inversely linked ...with health outcomes, but the biological processes by which social position "gets under the skin" to affect health are poorly understood.
Cross-sectional analyses involved participants (n = 704) from the second wave of the national population-based Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS). Data on pretax household-adjusted income and educational attainment were collected by questionnaire and telephone interview, respectively. Detailed medical history interviews, inventories of medication, and fasting blood samples for assessment of inflammatory proteins were obtained during an overnight clinic stay.
All three inflammatory proteins were inversely associated with both income and education in bivariate analyses. However, multivariate regression models, adjusting for potential confounds, showed that only low income predicted higher levels of inflammatory proteins. Moreover, inclusion of IL-6 in the regression models for CRP and fibrinogen eliminated the associations with income.
These results suggest that income explains the association between education and peripheral inflammation. In short, the reason that higher education is linked to reduced peripheral inflammation is because it reduces the risk for low income status, which is what is directly associated with reduced peripheral inflammation. The findings also suggest that the links between income and both CRP and fibrinogen are mediated by IL-6. These observations help to sharpen our understanding of the relationship between social position and biological markers of illness in the United States.
Administrative burdens have been conceptualised as people's experience of policy implementation as onerous, taking the form of learning, compliance and psychological costs that people experience in ...their interactions with the state (Heinrich, 2018; Herd and Moynihan, 2018; Masood and Nisar, 2021; Peeters, 2020). Such burdens can have a large effect on whether people can access benefits or rights to which they are entitled, and shape public beliefs about their relationship with government. They can also make it harder for public officials to do their jobs. This special issue takes up the topic from a variety of perspectives and settings
We undertook a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of parental longevity in European descent UK Biobank participants. For combined mothers' and fathers' attained age, 10 loci were associated (p<5*10
...), including 8 previously identified for traits including survival, Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease. Of these, 4 were also associated with longest 10% survival (mothers age ≥90 years, fathers ≥87 years), with 2 additional associations including
intronic variants (coding for the adrenocorticotropic hormone receptor). Mother's age at death was associated with 3 additional loci (2 linked to autoimmune conditions), and 8 for fathers only. An attained age genetic risk score associated with parental survival in the US Health and Retirement Study and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study and with having a centenarian parent (
=1,181) in UK Biobank. The results suggest that human longevity is highly polygenic with prominent roles for loci likely involved in cellular senescence and inflammation, plus lipid metabolism and cardiovascular conditions. There may also be gender specific routes to longevity.
This article seeks to elucidate the relationship between socioeconomic position and health by showing how different facets of socioeconomic position (education and income) affect different stages ...(onset vs. progression) of health problems. The biomedical literature has generally treated socioeconomic position as a unitary construct. Likewise, the social science literature has tended to treat health as a unitary construct. To advance our understanding of the relationship between socioeconomic position and health, and ultimately to foster appropriate policies and practices to improve population health, a more nuanced approach is required—one that differentiates theoretically and empirically among dimensions of both socioeconomic position and health. Using data from the Americans' Changing Lives Study (1986 through 2001/2002), we show that education is more predictive than income of the onset of both functional limitations and chronic conditions, while income is more strongly associated than education with the progression of both.
Women’s opportunities have been profoundly altered over the past century by reductions in the social and structural constraints that limit women’s educational attainment. Do social constraints ...manifest as a suppressing influence on genetic indicators of potential, and if so, did equalizing opportunity mean equalizing the role of genetics? We address this with three cohort studies: the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS; birth years 1939 to 1940), the Health and Retirement Study, and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health; birth years 1975 to 1982). These studies include a “polygenic score” for educational attainment, providing a novel opportunity to explore this question. We find that within the WLS cohort, the relationship between genetics and educational outcomes is weaker for women than for men. However, as opportunities changed in the 1970s and 1980s, and many middle-aged women went back to school, the relationship between genetic factors and education strengthened for women as they aged. Furthermore, utilizing the HRS and Add Health, we find that as constraints limiting women’s educational attainment declined, gender differences in the relationship between genetics and educational outcomes weakened. We demonstrate that genetic influence must be understood through the lens of historical change, the life course, and social structures like gender.
Physical and mental health is known to have wide influence over most aspects of social life—be it schooling and employment or marriage and broader social engagement—but it has received limited ...attention in explaining different forms of political participation. We analyze a unique data set with a rich array of objective measures of cognitive and physical well-being and two objective measures of political participation: voting and contributing money to campaigns and parties. For voting, each aspect of health has a powerful effect on par with traditional predictors of participation such as education. In contrast, health has little to no effect on making campaign contributions. We recommend additional attention to the multifaceted effects of health on different forms of political participation.
As the population ages and the prevalence of dementia increases, unpacking robust and persistent associations between educational attainment and later life cognitive functioning is increasingly ...important. We do know, from studies with robust causal designs, that policies that increase years of schooling improve later life cognitive functioning. Yet these studies don't illuminate why older adults with greater educational attainment have relatively preserved cognitive functioning. Studies focused on why, however, have been hampered by methodological limitations and inattention to some key explanations for this relationship. Consequently, we test explanations encompassing antecedent factors, specifically family environments, adolescent IQ, and genetic factors, as well as adult mediating mechanisms, specifically health behaviors and health. We employ the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which includes 80 years of prospectively collected data on a sample of 1 in every 3 high school graduates, and a selected sibling, from the class of 1957. Sibling models, and the inclusion of prospectively collected early and midlife covariates, allows us to address the explanatory and methodological limitations of the prior literature to better unpack the relationship between education and later life cognitive functioning. We find little evidence that early life genetic endowments and environments, or midlife health and health behaviors, explain the relationship. Adolescent cognition, however, does matter; higher educational attainment, linked to antecedent adolescent cognitive functioning, helps protect against lower levels of cognitive functioning in later life. Both adolescent cognition and education, however, independently associate with later life cognitive functioning at relatively similar magnitudes. Educational attainment's relationship to later life cognitive functioning is not simply a function of adolescent cognitive functioning.
•The education and late life cognition relationship is not well understood.•Genetic factors influencing education do not influence late life cognition.•Adolescent cognition influences late life cognition, in part, via education.•Education's influence is independent of adolescent cognition.•Midlife health and health behaviors do not mediate these relationships.
Administrative burdens are the frictions that people face in their encounters with public services, leading to meaningful costs that include learning, compliance, and psychological costs. We offer ...evidence that burdens are a key source and consequence of inequality, resulting in disparate outcomes in people’s access to basic rights. We also detail how these outcomes are patterned by targeting, federalism, bureaucratic pathologies, and the growing use of the private sector and tax system to deliver social welfare benefits. Throughout, we highlight recent and novel contributions, including empirical research in this double issue, that have helped clarify how and why administrative burdens shape inequality. Burdens have not received the political, policy, or research priority that is commensurate with their magnitude or impact on individuals. We conclude by arguing that we need a coherent language and framework to recognize and, where appropriate, reduce burdens across a wide array of policy domains.
Policy Points
Administrative burdens, which are the onerous experiences people have when trying to access government benefits and services, reduce older adult's access to health promoting policies.
...Although considerable attention has been focused on threats to the old‐age welfare state, ranging from long‐term financing problems to attempts to roll back benefits, administrative barriers to these programs already threaten their effectiveness.
Reducing administrative burden is a viable way to improve population health among older adults going forward over the next decade.
Administrative burdens are the frictions that people face in their encounters with public services, leading to meaningful costs that include learning, compliance, and psychological costs. We offer ...evidence that burdens are a key source and consequence of inequality, resulting in disparate outcomes in people’s access to basic rights. We also detail how these outcomes are patterned by targeting, federalism, bureaucratic pathologies, and the growing use of the private sector and tax system to deliver social welfare benefits. Throughout, we highlight recent and novel contributions, including empirical research in this double issue, that have helped clarify how and why administrative burdens shape inequality. Burdens have not received the political, policy, or research priority that is commensurate with their magnitude or impact on individuals. We conclude by arguing that we need a coherent language and framework to recognize and, where appropriate, reduce burdens across a wide array of policy domains.
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