The Evolving Importance of Early-Life Health for the Reproduction of Educational Disadvantage Across Birth Cohorts

Across the last five decades, the United States has experienced rising social inequality that elicits concern about children¿s future life chances. Increasingly unequal family and economic contexts suggest that children of disadvantaged families might face lower social mobility prospects across birth cohorts. However, the situation is not entirely bleak: alongside inequality¿s growth, a number of policies have increased educational opportunities and improved the floor level of health. This dissertation asks how these competing forces might have reshaped the reproduction of educational disadvantage across birth cohorts. In particular, it focuses on how rising inequality and ¿rising tides¿ of wellbeing might have revised the importance of child health as a channel through which educational disadvantage is passed from parents to children. I examine two related questions in successive chapters. First, has the association between mother¿s education and child health changed across birth cohorts? Second, has the association between child health and educational attainment changed across birth cohorts? The first two empirical chapters address the first question. Using data from the National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS), I examine whether the maternal gradient in children¿s subjective health has changed across 1965-2013 birth cohorts. I find that maternal education has become a weaker predictor of subjective health, but that this overall decline also masks important heterogeneity in explanatory pathways. The second empirical chapter extends this question to see if these declines extend to another measure of health, namely children¿s reported conditions. Higher maternal education means higher probabilities of having a condition, but this relationship has also attenuated across birth cohorts. In the final empirical chapter, I examine whether child health¿s implications for life chances have changed across cohorts. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), I find that early-life health (as measured through low birth weight) became a weaker¿and, in some cases, non-important¿predictor of educational attainment across 1940-1985 birth cohorts. Taken together, this dissertation¿s findings suggest that ¿rising tides¿ have overwhelmed rising social inequality, rendering child health a less important channel for the transmission of educational attainment from parents to children

PUBLIC SPEAKING ANXIETY BEFORE AND AFTER INTRODUCTORY SPEECH CLASSES (COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION, PERSONAL REPORT, STAGE FRIGHT, RETICENCE)

This exploratory investigation examines the effects of participation in a semester-long college level introductory speech course on the level of public speaking anxiety. The three research hypotheses were: (1) Self-reported anxiety as measured by the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) and the Public Speaking Inventory (PSI) will be multidimensional in nature, (2) participation in semester-long introductory speech courses, as opposed to introductory social science courses, will be accompanied by a reduction in public speaking anxiety as measured by the total scores and factor scores of the PRCA and PSI, and (3) the PSI and PRCA will be positively correlated. Subjects included students enrolled in introductory speech courses (N = 154) and introductory social science courses (N = 163) at five colleges or universities in the Philadelphia area. Students enrolled in speech courses served as the treatment group, while students enrolled in psychology or sociology courses provided the comparison group. Hypothesis I received support from principal factor analyses which were performed for each scale, and three distinct factors were found for each scale. Through multivariate and univariate analysis-of-covariance procedures, Hypothesis II was supported with regard to the PRCA total score, and the scores from Factors I (Inclinations Towards Public Speaking) and II (Inclinations to Avoid Public Speaking). Support was not found with regard to PRCA Factor III (Symptoms of Stage Fright) nor with the PSI total scores and the three PSI factor scores. Mean reduction in the PRCA scores was found for students with both high and moderate levels of communication anxiety. The third hypothesis was supported by a positive correlation coefficient between the two scales. The finding that the PRCA is multidimensional may suggest that the popular usage of the total score of the PRCA for assessment purposes is problematic. In addition, participation in a semester-long speech course did result in a significant reduction in speech anxiety as measured by the PRCA. Thus, course participation might be viewed as a beneficial, cost efficient, supplement to counseling for clients with speech anxiety. Finally, additional development of the PSI is indicated before this scale should be used by researchers, educators, and clinicians

PUBLIC SPEAKING ANXIETY BEFORE AND AFTER INTRODUCTORY SPEECH CLASSES (COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION, PERSONAL REPORT, STAGE FRIGHT, RETICENCE)

This exploratory investigation examines the effects of participation in a semester-long college level introductory speech course on the level of public speaking anxiety. The three research hypotheses were: (1) Self-reported anxiety as measured by the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) and the Public Speaking Inventory (PSI) will be multidimensional in nature, (2) participation in semester-long introductory speech courses, as opposed to introductory social science courses, will be accompanied by a reduction in public speaking anxiety as measured by the total scores and factor scores of the PRCA and PSI, and (3) the PSI and PRCA will be positively correlated. Subjects included students enrolled in introductory speech courses (N = 154) and introductory social science courses (N = 163) at five colleges or universities in the Philadelphia area. Students enrolled in speech courses served as the treatment group, while students enrolled in psychology or sociology courses provided the comparison group. Hypothesis I received support from principal factor analyses which were performed for each scale, and three distinct factors were found for each scale. Through multivariate and univariate analysis-of-covariance procedures, Hypothesis II was supported with regard to the PRCA total score, and the scores from Factors I (Inclinations Towards Public Speaking) and II (Inclinations to Avoid Public Speaking). Support was not found with regard to PRCA Factor III (Symptoms of Stage Fright) nor with the PSI total scores and the three PSI factor scores. Mean reduction in the PRCA scores was found for students with both high and moderate levels of communication anxiety. The third hypothesis was supported by a positive correlation coefficient between the two scales. The finding that the PRCA is multidimensional may suggest that the popular usage of the total score of the PRCA for assessment purposes is problematic. In addition, participation in a semester-long speech course did result in a significant reduction in speech anxiety as measured by the PRCA. Thus, course participation might be viewed as a beneficial, cost efficient, supplement to counseling for clients with speech anxiety. Finally, additional development of the PSI is indicated before this scale should be used by researchers, educators, and clinicians

Regional variation in the predictive validity of self-rated health for mortality

Self-rated health (SRH) is a commonly used measure for assessing general health in surveys in the United States. However, individuals from different parts of the United States may vary in how they assess their health. Geographic differences in health care access and in the prevalence of illnesses may make it difficult to discern true regional differences in health when using SRH as a health measure. In this article, we use data from the 1986 and 1989–2006 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality Files and estimate Cox regression models to examine whether the relationship between SRH and five-year all-cause mortality differs by Census region. Contrary to hypotheses, there is no evidence of regional variation in the predictive validity of SRH for mortality. At all levels of SRH, and for both non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black respondents, SRH is equally and strongly associated with five-year mortality across regions. Our results suggest that differences in SRH across regions are not solely due to differences in how respondents assess their health across regions, but reflect true differences in health. Future research can, therefore, employ this common measure to investigate the geographic patterning of health in the United States

Inequality and the association between involuntary job loss and depressive symptoms

a b s t r a c t Although socioeconomic status (SES) has been to shown to be associated with susceptibility to involuntary job loss as well as with health, the ways in which individual SES indicators may moderate the job loss-health association remain underexplored. Using data from the Americans' Changing Lives study, we estimate the ways in which the association between job loss and depressive symptoms depends on five aspects of SES: education, income, occupational prestige, wealth, and homeownership. Our findings indicate that higher SES prior to job loss is not uniformly associated with fewer depressive symptoms. Higher education and lower prestige appear to buffer the health impacts of job loss, while financial indicators do not. These results have a number of implications for understanding the multidimensional role that social inequality plays in shaping the health effects of job loss