Life course socioeconomic disadvantage and cardiovascular health among urban older adults in Latin America

Antwan Jones, Bowling Green State University
Franklin Goza, Bowling Green State University

Although socioeconomic status has been positively linked to health, little is known of how socioeconomic disadvantage experienced in both childhood and adulthood influence cardiovascular illness in lesser developed countries. With particular emphasis on the elderly, this paper uses Latin American data from the SABE project to test whether adult SES disadvantage, net of childhood SES disadvantage, is predictive of being diagnosed with hypertension and experiencing a heart attack. This paper also explores how location plays a role in the relationship between SES and health by providing country-specific analyses. Findings indicate that SES experienced in adulthood is positively associated heart heath, net of childhood SES. However, in the country-specific models, SES is negatively associated with health in Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Interestingly, daily alcohol use was protective against cardiovascular illness in all countries. Results indicate that SES advantage does not uniformly translate to a definite heath advantage for elderly Latin Americans.