Notes on health effects

I just returned from the meetings of the Population Association of America. First, I'll note that I now feel like an "old timer" there, so few of the people look familiar. I need to learn who the young demographers are. Since we don't have a graduate program here that attracts many demography students, I feel out of touch with those just starting their careers.

There was a paper I liked that laid out a lifecourse framework for looking at health effects of socio-economic status. The authors put forth three types of explanations. First, there is the cumulative risk hypothesis. This set of ideas all rest on the notion that risks are distributed differently by SES and that over the lifecourse you can either accumulate advantage or disadvantage. So, for instance, exposure to poor living conditions, inadequate nutrition, high rates of infectious disease, etc. can lead to health problems later in life. Conversely, exposure to good diet, high levels of physical activity, no smoking, and others can lead to better health.

The second hypothesis is a pathways hypothesis. There is a chain of risk that starts early in life that proceeds over time. For instance, you may have a poor diet, leading to obesity, leading to metabolic syndrome, leading to diabetes and heart disease.

The third hypothesis is a latency model. Here, there are deemed to be critical times in development that can affect later health. The primary argument is that there are intrauterine conditions during fetal development that will have consequences for health later in life. If there is stress or poor nutrition during these times, there is a predisposition for later life health problems to develop.

I'm not sure which set of ideas appeals to me the most. I suppose the first, the cumulative risk model. It seems to fit my anecdotal evidence. Also, I suppose, you could argue that the other two models are special cases of the first.