Social Inequalities Over the Life Course

Scholars studying social stratification now recognize that the reproduction of intergenerational inequality begins at a very young age (Jonsson 2010). Socioeconomic inequalities in children’s learning are present at the beginning of the school years, a trou-bling fact given strong correlations among achieve-ment, completed schooling, and economic status (Duncan, Ziol-Guest, and Kalil 2010). Economic dis-advantage and the risk of poor health go hand in hand, and socioeconomic inequality in child health is pres-ent at birth and increases throughout childhood (Finch 2003; Link and Phelan 1995). The appearance of health inequality so early in life has important impli-cations for patterns over the life course and across generations. Child health is a strong determinant of both short-term opportunities for upward mobility in the form of skill development and academic progress, as well as longer-term risk of downward mobility in the form of job loss, declining income, and prohibitive health care costs (Conley, Strully, and Bennett 2003; McLeod, Uemura, and Rohrman 2012; Palloni 2006). Despite increasing understanding of the effects of health on social processes, much existing research considers health and the skills that stem from it at iso-lated points in time. Such a perspective obscures a complete understanding of how the relationship between health and academic inequality emerges as children age and how health acts as a pathway in the intergenerational reproduction of disadvantage. Guided by cumulative inequality theory (Ferraro, Shippee, and Schafer 2009), this article advances research on health and social stratification by linking the dynamic nature of health in the early life course with trajectories of academic achievement. Using longitudinal data from the United Kingdom, I test the following ideas: (1) Child health is not only an early but also a variable and accumulating source of inequality in academic achievement—the timing, duration, and stability of poor health are important in predicting changes in academic inequality throug