Social class and healthy aging: What we can learn from IGEMS

Many important health outcomes are associated with social class. Yet how social class comes to be associated with health outcomes has been the subject of much debate and controversy within the field of social medicine. Social... [ view full abstract ]

Many important health outcomes are associated with social class. Yet how social class comes to be associated with health outcomes has been the subject of much debate and controversy within the field of social medicine. Social causation models account for the association by hypothesizing that social standing exerts a causal influence on health. Alternatively, social selection models posit that the association arises through reverse causation, that health influences social class achievement. Although twin and family studies cannot fully resolve social causation from social selection, these methods have been instrumental to testing some of the key tenets of the two models. Several features of IGEMS makes it very well suited to exploring mechanisms underlying the association of social class with late-life health. Specifically, IGEMS includes intergenerational social class data on large numbers of twins, which allows a differentiation between effects attributable to social class of origin from those attributable to achieved social class. Preliminary findings from IGEMS will be presented to illustrate the utility of behavioral genetic methods for understanding social class effects.