Early-life impairments, chronic health conditions, and income mobility
Peer reviewed, Journal article
Published version
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https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3115421Utgivelsesdato
2023Metadata
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Sammendrag
Individuals who have congenital conditions or become
disabled early in life tend to have poorer educational and
occupational outcomes than non-disabled individuals. Disa-
bility is known to be a complex entity with multiple causa-
tions, involving, inter alia, physiological, social, economic,
and cultural factors. It is established that social factors
can influence educational and occupational attainment
for disabled people, and current disability policy in many
countries, particularly in the Global North, stress the impor-
tance of equality of opportunity. However, there is a scar-
city of research that explores the specific degrees to which
advanced welfare states contribute to the equalization of
life chances for individuals with early-life impairments and
chronic health conditions. In this study, we use a Norwe-
gian sample of high-quality register data on individuals with
vision loss, hearing loss, physical impairment, type 1 diabe-
tes, asthma, and Down syndrome diagnosed early in life and
compare their intergenerational income mobility trajecto-
ries with a random sample drawn from the country's entire
population. We find that individuals' early-life diagnoses are
linked to significantly worse income outcomes in adulthood
than what is observed among the general population. We
conclude that even in one of the most advanced egalitarian
welfare states, such as Norway, much remains to be done to
equalize life chances for individuals with early-life impair-
ments and chronic health conditions.