Alternative Educational Pathways: Effects on Level and Change in Self-rated Health by Late Life

• In Event: 349 - Section on Aging and the Life Course Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Health over the Life Course

Abstract

We examine the effects of different educational pathways on level and change in self-rated health using Health and Retirement Study birth cohorts,1931- 1953. Respondents’ educational pathways were measured late in life and included “ideal” pathways of earning a high school diploma or college or higher degrees and “non-normative“ often delayed pathways of continued dropout status to late life, vs. GEDs or postsecondary entry with two year college completion. Our models adjust for childhood health status and childhood resource dis/advantages as well as multiple adult stratification mechanisms, associated with both educational attainment and health: wealth, job tenure as an indicator of labor market attachment, and duration of marriage. We find that a GED pathway does not significantly raise men’s or women’s level of self-assessed health in later life, relative to remaining in dropout status. They are not degree equivalents. Evidence is mixed for AA degrees: nonwhite men and white women report better self-rated health but most adults do not. Childhood health and socioeconomic status effects especially endure for women in change models: poorer or nonwhite girls have worse vs. improved SRH by late life and effects are not attenuated or even minimally reduced by alternative educational pathways. Reducing adult health disparities will require providing adequate thresholds of resources to support both health and educational attainment, from childhood forward.

Authors

• Cheryl Elman, University of Akron

• Juan Xi, University of Akron

• Linda A. Wray, Pennsylvania State University