Physical attractiveness and cardiometabolic risk.

OBJECTIVES: There is only limited evidence suggesting that physical attractiveness and individuals' actual health are causally linked. Past studies demonstrate that characteristics related to physical attractiveness are more likely to be present in healthy individuals, including those with better cardiovascular and metabolic health, yet many of these studies do not account for individuals' initial health and socioeconomic characteristics, which are related to both physical attractiveness and later life health. METHODS: We use panel survey data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health in the United States to examine the relationship between interviewer-rated in-person physical attractiveness and actual cardiometabolic risk (CMR) based on a set of relevant biomarkers: LDL cholesterol, glucose mg/dL, C-reactive protein, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and resting heart rate. RESULTS: We identify a robust relationship between individuals' physical attractiveness and 10-year follow up actual health measured by the levels of CMR. Individuals of above-average attractiveness appear to be noticeably healthier than those who are described as having average attractiveness. We find that individuals' gender and race/ethnicity do not have a major effect on the described relationship. The link between physical attractiveness and health is affected by interviewers' main demographic characteristics. We carefully address the possibility of confounders affecting our results including sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics, cognitive and personality traits, initial health problems and BMI. CONCLUSION: Our findings are largely in line with the evolutionary perspective which assumes that physical attractiveness is linked to individuals' biological health. Being perceived as physically attractive might also imply, among other aspects, high levels of satisfaction with life, self-confidence and ease of finding intimate partners, all of which can positively affect individuals' health.

Does perceived social mobility affect health? Evidence from a fixed effects approach.

RATIONALE: The question as to whether changing one's socioeconomic position over the life course affects health has not been answered in a conclusive manner. At the same time, it has been established that individuals who think of themselves that they are higher in the social hierarchy are healthier than those who think otherwise. OBJECTIVE: In this study, we focus on perceived social mobility to shed new light on the issue of how social mobility affects health. We examine whether perceived social mobility, i.e., an individual's appraisal of doing better or worse than their parents, affects health by analyzing longitudinal data from Poland. METHODS: Using a fixed effects approach to account for all time-invariant and important time-varying confounders, we analyze the Polish Panel Survey which has been collecting data on participants' social mobility perceptions along with information on their self-reported physical health and psychological wellbeing. RESULTS: We find that perceived social mobility is a significant predictor of self-reported physical health and psychological wellbeing, even in models that adjust for a host of theoretically relevant control variables. The results demonstrate that upward subjective mobility has a consistent and strong positive effect on health outcomes. The effect of perceived social mobility is stronger for males and for those with less advantageous social origins. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings are in line with the "from rags to riches" theoretical perspective, emphasizing the positive implications of upward social mobility on health through various psychological mechanisms. Based on our findings, we call for greater scholarly attention to subjective aspects of social mobility in research on health outcomes.

Downward income mobility among individuals with poor initial health is linked with higher cardiometabolic risk.

The effects of socioeconomic position (SEP) across life course accumulate and produce visible health inequalities between different socioeconomic groups. Yet, it is not well-understood how the experience of intergenerational income mobility between origin and destination SEP, per se, affects health outcomes. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health collected in the United States with the outcome measure of cardiometabolic risk (CMR) constructed from data on LDL Cholesterol, Glucose MG/DL, C-reactive protein, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and resting heart rate. Intergenerational income mobility is estimated as the difference between Waves 1 and 5 income quintiles. Diagonal reference models are used to test if intergenerational income mobility, net of origin and destination income quintile effects, is associated with CMR. We find that individuals in the lowest and the highest income quintiles have, respectively, the highest and the lowest CMR; both origin and destination income quintiles are equally important; there are no significant overall income mobility effects for different gender and race/ethnicity groups, but downward income mobility has negative health implications for individuals with poor initial health. We conclude that downward income mobility can increase inequalities in CMR in the United States by worsening the health of those who had poor health before their mobility experiences.

Social Mobility, Health and Wellbeing in Poland.

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.

Socioeconomic position, social mobility, and health selection effects on allostatic load in the United States.

The contemporaneous association between higher socioeconomic position and better health is well established. Life course research has also demonstrated a lasting effect of childhood socioeconomic conditions on adult health and well-being. Yet, little is known about the separate health effects of intergenerational mobility-moving into a different socioeconomic position than one's parents-among early adults in the United States. Most studies on the health implications of mobility rely on cross-sectional datasets, which makes it impossible to differentiate between health selection and social causation effects. In addition, understanding the effects of social mobility on health at a relatively young age has been hampered by the paucity of health measures that reliably predict disease onset. Analysing 4,713 respondents aged 25 to 32 from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health's Waves I and IV, we use diagonal reference models to separately identify the effects of socioeconomic origin and destination, as well as social mobility on allostatic load among individuals in the United States. Using a combined measure of educational and occupational attainment, and accounting for individuals' initial health, we demonstrate that in addition to health gradient among the socially immobile, individuals' socioeconomic origin and destination are equally important for multi-system physiological dysregulation. Short-range upward mobility also has a positive and significant association with health. After mitigating health selection concerns in our observational data, this effect is observed only among those reporting poor health before experiencing social mobility. Our findings move towards the reconciliation of two theoretical perspectives, confirming the positive effect of upward mobility as predicted by the "rags to riches" perspective, while not contradicting potential costs associated with more extensive upward mobility experiences as predicted by the dissociative thesis.

The Polish Panel Survey (POLPAN) dataset: Capturing the impact of socio-economic change on population health and well-being in Poland, 1988-2018.

The Polish Panel Survey, POLPAN, one of the longest continuously run panel studies in Europe, is designed to facilitate research on the socio-economic structure, inequalities and the individual life course under conditions of social change in Poland. POLPAN is well suited for studying how women's and men's health and wellbeing are influenced by their life conditions, such as financial and social resources, that Poland's post-1989 profound socio-economic transformations impacted, and how health outcomes further shape individuals' attitudes and behaviours. Initiated in 1987-88, POLPAN has been fielded in five-year intervals, most recently in 2018, with wave-specific samples representative of the Polish adult population and response rates for full panelists consistently above 70%. In POLPAN, health assessment measures are collected in all waves, as part of respondents' multi-dimensional and life course inequality profile. Data on self-rated physical and psychological health, collected since 1998 (Wave Three), are complemented with respondents' Nottingham Health Profile and core anthropometric information about personal weight and height (Wave Five onwards); health and wellbeing related reasons for work interruptions (since Wave Four); information on extensive hospital stays (Wave Six onwards) and respondents' chronic or protracted illnesses (in Wave Six), respondents' disability status (all waves). The newly released integrated 1988-2018 POLPAN dataset is available on Harvard Dataverse, or upon request, via e-mail: polpan@ifispan.waw.pl.