Parents who exit and parents who enter. Family structure transitions, child psychological health, and early drinking.

This paper seeks to extend prior research by exploring whether family structure transition is associated with an increase in early alcohol consumption and whether this association is mediated by; children's socio-emotional problems, providing information on whether the effects of the transition; differ according to the number of changes, the family's initial status, or the time of exposure. The; data have been drawn from the UK Millennium Cohort Study to explore associations framed with; a life-course approach. Our findings suggest that types of family transitions (such as distinguishing; parental exits from and parental entrances to the family) are more important than the number of; family changes during childhood. The results show that moving from a two-parent household to a single-parent household directly increased the probability of being a frequent alcohol consumer among early adolescent boys, whereas the indirect effect on girls was found via socio-emotional difficulties. Our findings also show an increase in socio-emotional and behavioural difficulties in boys due to the entrance of a step-parent only if the transition occurred in the earliest childhood. Indeed, a sensitivity analysis of the time to which the children were exposed to the transition to a new family structure showed stronger effects for those who experienced a family structure change in the early life course, consistent with the cumulative disadvantage process.

Health and income inequalities in Europe: What is the role of circumstances?

Equality of opportunity theories distinguish between inequalities due to individual effort and those due to external circumstances. Recent research has shown that half of the variability in income of World population was determined by country of birth and income distribution. Since health and income are generally strictly related, the aim of this paper is to estimate how much variability in income and health is determined by external circumstances. We use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE) and the English Longitudinal Survey on Ageing (ELSA), two comparable multidisciplinary surveys that provide micro-level data on health and financial resources among the elderly for a large number of European countries. Our baseline estimation shows that about 20% of the variability in income is explained by current country-specific circumstances, while health outcomes range from 12% using BMI to 19% using self-rated health. By including early-life circumstances, the explained variability increases almost 20 percentage points for income and for self-rated health but less for other health outcomes. Finally, by controlling for endogeneity issues linked with effort, our estimates indicate that circumstances better explain variability in health outcomes. Results are robust to some tests, and the implications of these findings are discussed.

Self-perceived health among Eastern European immigrants over 50 living in Western Europe.

OBJECTIVES: This paper examines whether Eastern European immigrants aged 50 and over living in Northern and Western Europe face a health disadvantage in terms of self-perceived health, with respect to the native-born. We also examined health changes over time (2004-2006-2010) through the probabilities of transition among self-perceived health states, and how they vary according to nativity status and age group. METHODS: Data were obtained from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Logistic regressions and probabilities of transition were used. RESULTS: Results emphasise the health disadvantage of Eastern European immigrants living in Germany, France and  Sweden with respect to the native-born, even after controlling for socio-economic status. Probabilities of transition also evidenced that people born in Eastern Europe were more likely to experience worsening health and less likely to recover from sickness. CONCLUSIONS: This paper suggests that health inequalities do not affect immigrant groups in equal measure and confirm the poorer and more steeply deteriorating health status of Eastern European immigrants.

Food prices and overweight patterns in Italy.

In this paper, we examine the role of relative food prices in determining the recent increase in body weight in Italy. Cross-price elasticities of unhealthy and healthy foods estimated by a demand system provide a consistent framework to evaluate substitution effects, when a close association is assumed between unhealthy (healthy) foods and more (less) energy-dense foods. We used a dataset constructed from a series of cross-sections of the Italian Household Budget Survey (1997-2005) to obtain the variables of the demand system, which accounts for regional price variability. The relative increase in healthy food prices was found to produce nontrivial elasticities of substitution towards higher relative consumption of unhealthy foods, with effects on weight outcomes. In addition, these changes were unevenly distributed among individuals and were particularly significant for those who were poorer and had less education.