Social Mobility, Health and Wellbeing in Poland

Abstract

Recently there has been a surge of interest in the consequences of intergenerational social mobility on individuals’ health and wellbeing outcomes. However, studies on the effects of social mobility on health, using high-quality panel survey data, have almost exclusively been conducted in Western welfare democracies. To account for this gap, and using empirical data from one of the largest and most eventful post-communist countries, Poland, in this study we investigate how individuals’ origin and destination socio-economic position and social mobility are linked to self-rated health and reported psychological wellbeing. We use the Polish Panel Survey (POLPAN) data to construct self-rated health and psychological wellbeing measures, origin, destination and occupational class mobility variables, and account for an extensive set of sociodemographic determinants of health. We employ diagonal reference models to distinguish social mobility effects from origin and destination effects, and account for possible health selection mechanisms. Our results suggest that there is an occupational class gradient in health in Poland and that both parental and own occupational class matter for individual health outcomes. We also find a positive reported psychological wellbeing effect for upward social mobility from the working to the professional class.

Trajectories in physical functioning at older age in relation to childhood and adulthood SES and social mobility: a population-based cohort study

“…better psychological well-being, not self-rated health. The differences between that study and our findings, where upward social mobility was significantly associated with better PF, could be explained by variations in study design (cross-sectional vs. longitudinal), outcomes assessed (self-rated health vs. PF), and the method used to classify SES (based on occupational status only in the previous study) (35).…”

“…However, upward social mobility was only related to better psychological well-being, not self-rated health. The differences between that study and our findings, where upward social mobility was significantly associated with better PF, could be explained by variations in study design (cross-sectional vs. longitudinal), outcomes assessed (self-rated health vs. PF), and the method used to classify SES (based on occupational status only in the previous study) ( 35 ). Additionally, the strength of the relationship between SES and self-rated health is known to depend on the SES indicator used ( 59 ), and the results of a Swedish study suggest a strong mediation effect of working conditions on the association between social class and physical impairment in older age ( 60 ).…”

“…Health disparities by SES are pronounced in Central and Eastern Europe, yet relatively few studies have focused on older populations in this region (33)(34)(35)(36). Studying Eastern European populations is intriguing because they generally have shorter life expectancies and have experienced revolutionary political and economic reforms that have led to rapid changes in social structures (37,38).…”

How are social origin, destination and mobility linked to physical, mental, and self-rated health? Evidence from the United States

“…Researchers were primarily concerned with upward social mobility's implications on individuals' lives associated with socioeconomic progress and improving living standards. In the twenty-first century persisting health inequalities and intergenerational reproduction of socioeconomic position (SEP), the greater availability of data, and novel methodological approaches and statistical software have been among the factors leading to a renewed scholarly interest in the topic of the health implications of social mobility (Bukodi et al 2020;Kaiser and Trinh 2021;Mackenbach 2019;Präg 2019;Präg and Gugushvili 2021;van der Waal et al 2017;Zelinska et al 2021).…”