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Category: Project

Description: This study extends health disparities research by examining racial differences in the relationships between multigenerational attainments and mortality risk among "Silent Generation" women born between the 1920s and 1940s. An emerging literature suggests that the socioeconomic attainments of adjacent generations, one's parents and adult children, provide an array of life-extending resources in old age. Prior research, however, has demonstrated neither how multigenerational resources are implicated in women's longevity nor how racial disparities faced by Silent Generation women may differentially structure the relationships between socioeconomic attainments and mortality. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women, the analysis provides evidence of a three-generation model in which parent occupation, personal wealth, and adult child education are independently associated with women's mortality. Furthermore, although black women's education has no association with their mortality risk, the education of their adult children is a robust predictor of black women's survival.