The Relationship between Socio-Economic Status and Health of the Children - Research Proposal Example

Introduction There is a great deal of literature taking account of the relationship involving socioeconomic status (SES) and health (Wilkinson and Marmot, 1999). Particularly, there has been a great deal of research regarding the relationship of the health of children and the income of their parents. This relationship is noted to be of utmost significance since it has been demonstrated that the effects are long-lasting. It has been drawn that poor health in childhood is connected with lower educational achievement, substandard labor market outcomes and inferior health in adulthood. Case, Fertig and Paxson (2004) has examined how the relationship between parental SES and UK child health differs as children become older with the use of the UK National Child Development Study (NCDS) 1958 birth cohort. In this particular study they were able to find out that the relationship between parental SES and child health becomes steeper when the child gets older, for instance, the health differences across SES turns out to be larger as children mature. On the other hand this particular thought remains to be unambiguous in some areas, and other, work whether the direction of causality is clearly established. For instance, it is not clear whether this is because of low SES children having more unfavorable health shocks, or more grave ones, or whether such households do not manage as well with these shocks. Currie and Hyson (1999) partly achieve something in addressing a comparable issue using US data - for low birthweight. They were able to discover that low SES births were more probable to be lighter but, astonishingly, the effect of low birth weight on health does not differ much across SES. The proposed study would investigate the effect of parental background on child health particularly their personal/eudaimonic well being. The study would be principally concerned with the extent to which income influences child health obtaining the result of spurious correlation as compared to some causal mechanism. Literature Review Aristotle initially wrote about eudaimonia pertains to the recognition of one’s true potential (Ryff, 1989). According to this inspection, every individual comes into life with exclusive abilities referred to as one’s ‘daimon’. The fundamental undertaking of life is to distinguish and understand these talents. Variants of such ideas filtered into succeeding formulations of the human circumstances, like that of existential philosophy, which is noted to have underlined the accountability of the individual to discover meaning in his or her existence, although faced with inconsiderate or illogical realities. In the field of psychology, several accounts of wellbeing like that of the formulation of self-actualization by Maslow (1968), or the view of the fully functioning person by Rogers (1961), illustrated these portrayals of the organism attempting and working make the most of their own potential. Further accounts, like that of the model of psychosocial development by Erikson (1959), the formulation of adulthood by Allport (1961) or the categorization of the individuation progression by Jung (1933), provided constructive alternatives to the Freudian representation of the human consciousness fastened in divergence and apprehension. Theirs was a compassionate and optimistic visualization that interpreted the individual as forever appealing in new life disputes that added to better self-knowledge, development and efficiency. There has been a great deal of empirical research that has investigated how eudaimonic well-being differs in terms of socio-demographic factors such as one’s gender, age, socio-economic status, race/ ethnicity or culture (Ryff et al. 2003). An additional line of inquiry emphasizes on how several challenges in life, like that of parenthood, involving individual disabilities, growing up with an alcoholic parent, providing care to an unwell or disabled important other, or having to go through relocation could be influence one’s well being. These varied studies have been carried out with both national and local samples, by means of cross-sectional as well as longitudinal designs. Age variation patterns in eudaimonic well-being have been duplicated for other multiple samples. The components of wellbeing, like that of self-acceptance, illustrate minimal difference by age from young adulthood through midlife to old age, at the same time as environmental mastery demonstrates increments with age. Cross-sectional data are unanswered whether such patterns are particularly because to cohort variations or maturational processes. Nevertheless, longitudinal queries were able to show that eudaimonic well-being is not trait-like; instead it is rather dynamic, demonstrating cross-time change as individuals discuss particular life transitions (Kwan et al. 2003). Pertinent to the socio-economic standing, eudaimonic well-being has been found to be positively linked with both educational attainment and occupational status. Nonetheless, there are also findings pertaining to the fact that changeability in eudaimonic well-being increases as one move down the educational hierarchy Current work by Currie, Shields and Wheatley-Price (2004) has examined the association between the health of children and the incomes together with education levels of their parents, by means of pooled data from the 1997-2002 Health Surveys of England (Sprosten and Primatesta, 2003). In this data two generations are at hand in the household, consequently it is probable to match the health of children with the educational attainment as well as income of their parents. That particular research tried substantiating the extent to which findings for the US, in previous research by Case, Lubotsky and Paxson (2002), are more normally appropriate. They demonstrated that the subsistence of an important and positive effect of income, with children in poorer families possessing considerably inferior health as compared to children from richer families. They also demonstrated that the income grade in child health augmented with child age in the US, provided with the protective outcome of income building up over the childhood years. Currie et al. (2004) have put forward the argument that the NHS is triumphant in assuring the health of the children of low income UK parents as they discover no evidence that the income effect on child health increases with child age. Methodology However it is important to note that although there are various studies conducted on the concept of SES and how it affects children in different areas particularly health, there are limited studies on the influence of SES to a child’s Personal well being (PWB). Thus the study would be focused on this aspect attempting to establish the link between SES and PWB. The data that would used to analyze and establish the relationship of SES and a child’s PWB would be from the data collected from the wisconsin longitudinal study. In the interpretation of the data, the analysis of variation (ANOVA) and post-ad hoc t-test would be used. The ANOVA proves to be an appropriate method since an ANOVA provides an analysis of the variation present in an experiment. It is a test of the hypothesis that the variation in an experiment is no greater than that due to normal variation of individuals characteristics and error in their measurement. In the study to be conducted it is hypothesized that there is proportionate relationship between SES and PWB in such a way that affirmative SES could be equivalent to a positive PWB. References: Allport, G. W. 1961 Pattern and growth in personality. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Case, A., A. Fertig and C. Paxson (2004), “The lasting impact of childhood health and circumstances”, Center for Health and Wellbeing Discussion Paper, Princeton. Case, A., D. Lubotsky and C. Paxson (2002), “Economic status and health in childhood: The origins of the gradient”, American Economic Review, 92, 1308-1334. Currie, J. and R. Hyson (1999), “Is the impact of health shocks cushioned by socioeconomic status? The case of low birth weight”, American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), 89, 245-250. Currie, A., M.A. Shields, and S. Wheatley-Price (2004), “Is the Child Health / Family Income Gradient Universal? Evidence from England”, IZA Working Paper 1328. Erikson, E. 1959 Identity and the life cycle. Psychol. Issues 1, 18–164. Jung, C. G. 1933 Modern man in search of a soul. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World. Ryff, C. D. 1989 Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being. J. Person. Soc. Psychol. 57, 1069–1081. Ryff, C. D., Keyes, C. L. M. & Hughes, D. L. 2003 Status inequalities, perceived discrimination, and eudaimonic well-being: do the challenges of minority life hone purpose and growth? J. Hlth Soc. Behav. 44, 275–291. Rogers, C. R. 1961 On becoming a person. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Maslow, A. 1968 Toward a psychology of being, 2nd ed. New York: Van Nostrand. Wilkinson, R. and M. Marmot (eds.) (2003), Social Determinants of Health: the Solid Facts, World Health Organisation, 2nd edition. Read More