TY  - JOUR
A1  - Brady, David
A1  - Guerra, Christian
A1  - Kohler, Ulrich
A1  - Link, Bruce
T1  - The long arm of prospective childhood income for mature adult health in the U.S.
JF  - Journal of health and social behavior
N2  - Pioneering scholarship links retrospective childhood conditions to mature adult health. We distinctively provide critical evidence with prospective state-of-the-art measures of parent income observed multiple times during childhood in the 1970s to 1990s. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we analyze six health outcomes (self-rated health, heart attack, stroke, life-threatening chronic conditions, non-life-threatening chronic conditions, and psychological distress) among 40- to 65-year-olds. Parent relative income rank has statistically and substantively significant relationships with five of six outcomes. The relationships with heart attack, stroke, and life-threatening chronic conditions are particularly strong. Parent income rank performs slightly better than alternative prospective and retrospective measures. At the same time, we provide novel validation on which retrospective measures (i.e., father’s education) perform almost as well as prospective measures. Furthermore, we inform several perennial debates about how relative versus absolute income and other measures of socioeconomic status and social class influence health.
KW  - health disparities
KW  - income
KW  - life course
KW  - social class
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465221081094
SN  - 0022-1465
SN  - 2150-6000
VL  - 63
IS  - 4
SP  - 543
EP  - 559
PB  - Sage
CY  - Los Angeles
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kohler, Ulrich
A1  - Brady, David
A1  - Guerra, Christian
A1  - Link, Bruce
T1  - The long term relationship between childhood Medicaid expansions and severe chronic conditions in adulthood
JF  - Social Policy and Administration
Y1  - 2023
SN  - 1467-9515
VL  - 58
IS  - 1
SP  - 39
EP  - 60
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kohler, Ulrich
A1  - Brady, David
A1  - Guerra, Christian
A1  - Link, Bruce
T1  - The long term relationship between medicaid expansion and  adult life-threatening chronic conditions
JF  - Social policy and administration
N2  - We test whether the expansions of children's Medicaid eligibility in the 1980s–1990s resulted in long-term health benefits in terms of severe chronic conditions. Still relatively rare in the field, we use prospective individual-level panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) along with the higher quality income measures from the Cross-National Equivalent File (adjusting for taxes, transfers and household size). We observe severe chronic conditions (high blood pressure/heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or lung disease) at ages 30–56 (average age 43.1) for 4670 respondents who were also prospectively observed during childhood (i.e., at ages 0–17). Our analysis exploits within-region temporal variation in childhood Medicaid eligibility and adjusts for state- and individual-level controls. We uniquely concentrate attention on adjusting for childhood income. A standard deviation greater childhood Medicaid eligibility significantly reduces the probability of severe chronic conditions in adulthood by 0.05 to 0.12 (16%–37.5% reduction from mean 0.32). Across the range of observed childhood Medicaid eligibility, the probability is approximately cut in half. Greater childhood Medicaid eligibility also substantially reduces childhood income disparities in severe chronic conditions. At higher levels of childhood Medicaid eligibility, we find no significant childhood income disparities in adult severe chronic conditions.
Y1  - 2023
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12942
SN  - 0037-7643
SN  - 1467-9515
VL  - 58
IS  - 1
SP  - 39
EP  - 60
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Oxford
ER  -