Educational Attainment and Staphylococcus aureus Colonization in a Hispanic Border Community: Testing Fundamental Cause Theory

ABSTRACT This study was carried out to evaluate hypotheses generated by fundamental cause theory regarding the socioeconomic status (SES) gradient in colonization with Staphylococcus aureus among Hispanic and non-Hispanic adults living in a border community. Participants (n = 613) recruited in naturally occurring small groups at public and private sites throughout Yuma County, AZ, completed a sociodemographic survey and swabbed their palms, noses, and throats to sample microbial flora. Positive S. aureus colonization among non-Hispanic white participants was nominally higher (39.0%; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 32.4 to 46.1%) than that in Hispanics (31.3%; 95% CI = 26.4 to 36.8%), but there was no education gradient for the sample overall (incidence rate ratio = 1.00; 95% CI = 0.90 to 1.12) or within each ethnic group separately. The education gradient between Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites was statistically equivalent. Results were consistent when home ownership was used as the SES indicator. These data show that S. aureus colonization is not linked to two different SES indicators or Hispanic ethnicity. S. aureus colonization may be considered a less preventable health risk that is outside the influence of SES-based resources. IMPORTANCE Unlike some types of S. aureus infections, S. aureus colonization is not associated with ethnicity or educational attainment and thus may be outside the influence of socioeconomic status-based resources typically mobilized to avoid or mitigate preventable health risks. This assessment of a clinically silent risk that usually precedes infections may illustrate a boundary of fundamental cause theory.

Acculturation, education, and gender roles: evidence from Canada

This article studies the influence of cultural norms on economic outcomes. We combine detailed information on second-generation female immigrants with historical data from their ancestral source countries to see how the cultural endowment affects current decisions on work and fertility. We show that results using the standard approach are somewhat sensitive to context and specification. We then extend to reveal an education gradient for cultural assimilation: lower-educated women exhibit a strong influence of cultural variables while higher-educated women show no influence at all. We gather and present evidence on several potential mechanisms for the education gradient.

Gender Disparities in the Education Gradient in Self-Reported Health across Birth Cohorts in China

Background: Variation in the relationship between education and health has been studied intensely over the past few decades. Although there is research on gender disparity and cohort variations in educational effect on health using samples from the U.S. and Europe, research about China’s is limited. Given the specific social changes in China, our study is designed to analyze the gender and cohort patterns in the education-health gradient. Method: The latent growth-curve modeling was used to analyze the gender and cohort variations in the education gradient in self-rated health among Chinese respondents. The study employed longitudinal and nationally representative data from the Chinese Family Panel Studies from the years 2010 to 2016. Each cohort is specified according to their distinct periods of social change in China. Following the analysis, we used latent growth-curve model to illustrate gender and cohort differences in the age-graded education and health trajectories. Results: Although Chinese men have reported to have better health than women in general, women reported 1.6 percentage points higher in self-reported health for each additional year of schooling compared to that of men (P < 0.001). The latent growth curve model showed women’s extra education benefits were persistent overtime. Compared to the people born during the “Old China” (1908-1938), the education gradient in self-rated health did not change for cohorts born before 1955 and after 1977, but the education-health gap changed significantly in the 1956-1960 (O.R.=1.038, P<0.05), 1967-1976 (O.R.=1.058, P<0.001), and 1977-1983 (O.R.=1.063, P<0.001) cohorts. There was a gender difference for the cohort variations in the education-health gradient. For women, the education effect in the 1956-1960 (O.R.=1.063, P<0.05) , 1967-1976 (O.R.=1.088, P<0.001) and 1977-1983 (O.R.=1.102, P<0.001) cohorts was significantly higher than that of the 1908-1938 cohort. On the contrary, the education-health gradient remained the same across all cohorts for men. Conclusion: Our study suggests that the education-health gradient varies across cohorts for women, but the size of education effect remains consistent for men across cohorts. The findings support the resource-substitution hypothesis and not the rising-importance hypothesis in China. We discussed the potential influences of the unique, social transformation and educational expansion in China.