Socioeconomic Status and Health in Childhood: A Comment on Chen, Martin and Matthews (2006)

Understanding whether the gradient in children's health becomes steeper with age is an important first step in uncovering the mechanisms that connect economic and health status, and in recommending sensible interventions to protect children's health. To that end, this paper examines why two sets of authors, Chen et al (2006) and Case et al (2002), using data from the same source, reach markedly different conclusions about income-health gradients in childhood. We find that differences can be explained primarily by the inclusion (exclusion) of a handful of younger adults living independently.