Innate Advantage Or Acquired Effort

The health status of middle-age and old-age people is not only related to the living standard of each family,but also associated with the national pension burden and national general development.Among the various factors affecting health status,socioeconomic status is regarded as the most important external factor,and its impact on health is gradually known to the academia and the public.However,current research focuses on the impact of middle-aged or elderly socioeconomic status on health,but ignores the system analysis from the perspective of life cycle.Life Course Theory provides an important theoretical perspective for this study,which views life stages from a dynamic development perspective,especially focuses on the impact of critical periods on individual development.Inspired by this theory,this paper starts from the two key periods of childhood and adulthood,and systematically analyzes the possible impact of socioeconomic status on the health status of middle-aged and elderly people with longitudinal data.We believe that this study contributes to understanding the impact factors of middle-aged and elderly people,and also is essential to promote active aging.This paper first defines the connotation of health and socioeconomic status from the perspective of sociology,and proposes specific measurement indicators based on previous research and the specific situation in China,and additionally systematically sorts out the impact of socioeconomic status on health based on the relevant literature reviewed.This paper uses the three-phase survey data of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey(CHARLS)in 2013,2014 and 2018,utilizes the four indicators of self-assessment of health,chronic disease status,daily activity ability and depression of middle-aged and elderly people to measure health status;and utilizes parental education,paternal occupation and residence type(Hukou),paternal education and household income to measure socioeconomic status in childhood and adulthood.Based on logistic multiple regression model,we systematically analyzed the impact of socioeconomic status on the health status of the middle-aged and elderly people.The regression results show that the effects of childhood socioeconomic status on the health of middle-aged and elderly people are various.Childhood socioeconomic status only has a positive effect on some aspects of health among middle-aged and elderly group.Regardless of the health indicators,individuals with higher socioeconomic status in adulthood have relatively better health status.In order to clarify the effect path among the childhood socioeconomic status,adulthood socioeconomic status and the health status in middle-age and old-age period and the effect sizes,this study synthesizes the specific indicators and analyzes the relationship with Structural Equation Model.The results of path analysis show that socioeconomic status in adulthood has a direct and significant positive impact on the health status of middle-aged and elderly people.However,the socioeconomic status in childhood does not directly affect the health status of middle-aged and elderly people,and its impact on health is through the mediation effect of socioeconomic status in adulthood.We also compared and analyzed the effect size of childhood and adulthood socioeconomic status on the health status of middle-aged and old-age people.The results showed that the impact of adult socioeconomic status on health was greater than that of childhood socioeconomic status.We summarize the findings as the health status in the middle age and old age is the results of both innate advantage and acquired effort,and the effect of acquired effort is greater than the innate advantage.Based on these findings,we proposed to pay great attention to child group with low socioeconomic status,to cultivate a healthy lifestyle for adults,to promote individual socioeconomic status in adulthood and to strengthen the chronic disease screening and psychological intervention work for the elderly,so as to improve the healthy development of the middle-age and old age population,and to enhance their life quality and to promote the well-being of all.