Intergenerational mobility in relative educational attainment and health-related behaviours

Research on intergenerational social mobility and health-related behaviours yields mixed fndings. Depending on the direction of mobility and the type of mechanisms involved, we can expect positive or negative association between intergenerational mobility and health-related behaviours. Using data from a retrospective cohort study, conducted in more than 100 towns across Belarus, Hungary and Russia, we ft multilevel mixed-efects Poisson regressions with two measures of health-related behaviours: binge drinking and smoking. The main explanatory variable, intergenerational educational mobility is operationalised in terms of relative intergenerational educational trajectories based on the prevalence of specifed qualifcations in parental and ofspring generations. In each country the associations between intergenerational educational mobility, binge drinking and smoking was examined with incidence rate ratios and predicted probabilities, using multiply imputed dataset for missing data and controlling for important confounders of healthrelated behaviours. We fnd that intergenerational mobility in relative educational attainment has varying association with binge drinking and smoking and the strength and direction of these efects depend on the country of analysis, the mode of mobility, the gender of respondents and the type of health-related behaviour. Along with accumulation and Falling from Grace hypotheses of the consequences of intergenerational mobility, our fndings suggest that upward educational mobility in certain instances might be linked to improved health-related behaviours.

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