IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0244371.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Putting cumulative (dis)advantages in context: Comparing the role of educational inequality in later-life functional health trajectories in England and Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Wetzel
  • Bram Vanhoutte

Abstract

Background: The cumulative (dis)advantage (CAD) perspective more and more is examined in a comparative way, to highlight the role of context in generating inequality over the life course. This study adds to this field of research by examining trajectories of activities of daily living (ADL) in later life by educational level in a country comparison of England and Germany, emphasizing differing institutional conditions. Method: Data used are the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA; 11,352 individuals) and the German subsample of the Survey of Health and Retirement in Europe (SHARE; 5,573 individuals). Using population averaged Poisson panel regression models, 12-year trajectories of six birth cohorts are investigated, covering the age range of 50 to 90 years. Results: Respondents in England have a higher level of limitations at age 50, and more limited increases over age than in Germany. An educational gradient exists in both countries at age 50. Notably, the educational gradient increases for more recently born cohorts, but declines with increasing age in England, while in Germany educational differences increase for more recently born cohort only. Discussion: The current study indicates that CAD processes between educational groups are context sensitive. While England showed convergence of disparities with increasing age, in Germany no differential development was found.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Wetzel & Bram Vanhoutte, 2020. "Putting cumulative (dis)advantages in context: Comparing the role of educational inequality in later-life functional health trajectories in England and Germany," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(12), pages 1-21, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0244371
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244371
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0244371
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0244371&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0244371?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Leopold, Liliya & van Valkengoed, Irene G.M. & Engelhardt, Henriette, 2023. "Education and age trajectories of chronic conditions: Are tests of the cumulative advantage and disadvantage hypothesis biased by underreporting?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 334(C).
    2. Karyn Morrissey & Tim Taylor & Gengyang Tu, 2023. "Estimating the Impact of Relative Financial Circumstances in Childhood on Adult Mental Wellbeing: a Mediation Analysis," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 18(2), pages 915-930, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0244371. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.