Life course transitions in early adulthood and SES disparities in tobacco use

doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2013.08.005

Social Science Research

Volume 43, January 2014, Pages 45-59

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2013.08.005 Get rights and content

Highlights

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Youth with highly educated parents smoke less in adolescence.
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Differences in smoking by parental education widen in young adulthood.
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Achieved socioeconomic status (SES) in young adulthood reduces smoking.
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Achieved SES helps account for diverse age trajectories by parental education.
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Family background and life course transitions combine to affect smoking.

Abstract

A huge literature has documented adult socioeconomic disparities in smoking but says less about how these disparities emerge over the life course. Building on findings that smoking among adolescents differs only modestly by parental SES, we utilize a life course perspective on social differentiation to help explain the widening disparities in smoking in young adulthood. Our theory suggests that achieved socioeconomic status and the nature and timing of adult role transitions affect age-based trajectories of smoking and widen disparities in adult smoking. The analyses use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which follows a representative national sample over four waves from ages 11–17 in 1994/1995 to 26–34 in 2007/2008. The results show divergent age trajectories in smoking by parental education and that achieved socioeconomic status and life course roles in young adulthood account in good part for differences in the age trajectories. The findings demonstrate the value of the life course perspective in understanding processes of increasing stratification in health behavior and health during the transition to adulthood.

Section snippets

Life course changes and smoking

The life course perspective offers two insightful themes concerning age-based trajectories of social behavior. On one hand, childhood conditions and experiences have enduring influences on adult conditions and experiences, thus creating some coherency and meaning in the life course (Elder, 1974). In specifying the nature of these linkages, theories of cumulative advantage argue that favorable conditions during childhood become a resource leading to future gains. The steady, incremental

Achieved socioeconomic status and smoking

The first major pathway through which SES in the family of origin can shape smoking trajectories during the transition to adulthood is achieved SES. During young adulthood, achieved SES grows in importance relative to ascribed family background during young adulthood (Pampel, 2008, Yang et al., 2008). While income and wealth often change substantially throughout adulthood, most Americans’ educational attainment is set by their mid- to late twenties (Stoops, 2003), and, although often not yet

Adult roles and smoking

The second pathway through which ascribed SES may shape smoking trajectories in the transition to adulthood relates to the nature and timing of transitions to adult roles. The human life course can be understood as a series of phases that bring new roles and norms (Elder, 1994). The transitions to adult roles of individuals from lower-SES backgrounds differ in two ways from those of their higher-SES counterparts. First, the nature of the adult roles tends to differ in ways that reflect social

Hypotheses

These arguments about the pathways through which ascribed SES shapes smoking trajectories during the transition to adulthood lead to three sets of predictions. First, descriptively, age trajectories in smoking should differ by parental socioeconomic background, with the disparities increasing over the transition to adulthood. Second, achieved SES and new adult roles should reduce smoking, except when the roles are assumed early in the life course or out of the normatively prescribed order. This

Data

The wide use and familiarity of the longitudinal Add Health data to most researchers testify to its value. The survey data cover a nationally representative sample at four time points (1994/1995, 1996, 2001, 2007/2008) and for ages from 11–17 (Wave 1) to 26–34 (Wave 4). With a cluster design that samples students within 132 randomly selected middle and high schools and oversamples minority youth, Add Health contains at-home interviews of 20,745 students at Wave 1 and 15,701 at Wave 4 (Add

Results

Table 1 lists descriptive statistics for the model variables, both pooled across waves and separately by wave. On average, about 34% of the sample smoked in the last month, and the average rises over time across all waves, except in Wave 3 (which may be underestimated slightly because of a different form of the smoking question). However, to describe the trajectories correctly, smoking should be matched to age rather than to wave.

As shown by statistics for the background variables, the sample

Discussion

Our analysis of life course changes in smoking produces three sets of findings corresponding to each of the hypotheses. First, differences in smoking disparities by parents’ education start small in adolescence but widen in young adulthood, thus contributing to SES disparities among adults. Others have found such a pattern (Lacey et al., 2010, Yang et al., 2008), but description of smoking trajectories from adolescence to young adulthood with high quality national longitudinal data up to age 34

Acknowledgments

This project received funding and administrative support from the University of Colorado Population Center, which is funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Grant NICHD R21 HD051146). It uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice

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Life course transitions in early adulthood and SES disparities in tobacco use

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

Life course changes and smoking

Achieved socioeconomic status and smoking

Adult roles and smoking

Hypotheses

Data

Results

Discussion

Acknowledgments

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

Addictive Behaviors

Social Science and Medicine

Drug and Alcohol Dependence

Lancet

Social Science and Medicine

Social Science and Medicine

Social Science and Medicine

Socioeconomic status and health: the challenge of the gradient

American Psychologist

Emerging adulthood: a theory of development from the late teens through the twenties

American Psychologist

The Decline of Substance Use in Young Adulthood: Changes in Social Activities, Roles, and Beliefs

The Education-Drug Use Connection: How Successes and Failures in School Relate to Adolescent Smoking, Drinking, Drug Use, and Delinquency

Working class matters: socioeconomic disadvantage, race/ethnicity, gender, and smoking in NHIS 2000

American Journal of Public Health

Perceived racial/ethnic harassment and tobacco use among African American young adults

American Journal of Public Health

Early family transitions and depressive symptom changes from adolescence to early adulthood

Journal of Marriage and Family

The empirical relationship between community social capital and the demand for cigarettes

Health Economics

Smoking attributable mortality, years of potential life lost, and productivity losses – United States2000–2004

MMWR

The natural history of cigarette smoking from adolescence to adulthood in a Midwestern community sample: multiple trajectories and their psychosocial correlates

Health Psychology

Developmental trajectories of substance use from early adolescence to young adulthood: gender and racial/ethnic differences

Journal of Adolescent Health

The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years

New England Journal of Medicine

The collective dynamics of smoking in a large social network

New England Journal of Medicine

Trajectories of smoking from adolescence to early adulthood and their psychosocial risk factors

Health Psychology

Families with young children: a review of research in the 1990s

Journal of Marriage and the Family

Tobacco Use among U.S. Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups: A Report of the Surgeon General

Cumulative advantage as a mechanism for inequality: a review of theoretical and empirical developments

Annual Review of Sociology

Father’s occupational group and daily smoking during adolescence: patterns and predictors

American Journal of Public Health

Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience

Time, human agency, and social change: perspectives on the life course

Social Psychological Quarterly

Eliminating tobacco-related health disparities: directions for future research

American Journal of Public Health

Cigarette smoking: a light on gender and class inequality in Britain?

Journal of Social Policy

Socioeconomic status and health behaviors in adolescence: a review of the literature

Journal of Behavioral Medicine

The long arm of childhood: the influence of early-life social conditions on men’s mortality

Demography