INCOME DYNAMICS AND HEALTH

The focus of this article is the economic dimension of socioeconomic s tatus as it relates to health. In contrast to the assumptions of many life cycle models, the author finds household income to be quite volat ile for many families, even during periods of macroeconomic growth. In come inequality has increased dramatically in the last 20 years. Studi es relating various measures of health (e.g., low birth weight; cognit ive development, stunting, wasting in early childhood; mortality in la ter adult years) to longitudinal measures of family income often find quite powerful effects of income, even after controlling for correlate d aspects of socioeconomic status and baseline health status. The auth or discusses strategies for modeling income effects.