Timeframe
2014-2017
Funding
Health Research Council of New Zealand
COMPASS staff
Peter Davis
Barry Milne
Liza Bolton
Jinfeng Zhao
Collaborators
University of Auckland
Andrew Sporle
Alan Lee
University of Otago Wellington
Tony Blakely
June Atkinson
Statistics New Zealand
Robert Didham
Kirsten Nissen
Description
This project linked StatsNZ’s New Zealand Longitudinal Census (NZLC) to the New Zealand Census Mortality Study, which gave us the unique opportunity to:
- Assess life-course socioeconomic influences on mortality in New Zealand;
- Test whether these influences are similar or different across ethnic groups; and
- Ascertain if there are life-course factors that are protective against socioeconomic disadvantage.
The research had four overall aims:
- Testing life-course hypotheses – we assessed four life-course hypotheses to see which one best explained associations between socioeconomic status and mortality in New Zealand:
- The accumulation hypothesis;
- The sensitive period hypothesis;
- The social mobility hypothesis; or
- The instability hypothesis.
- Testing protective effects of social and cultural capital – we tested whether or not these items could protect against socioeconomic risk.
- Understanding ethnic disparities – we assessed the extent to which these were explained by greater long-term exposures to harsh and/or unstable environments among some ethnic groups, e.g. Māori and Pacific groups. We also tested whether life-course access to various forms of capital could protect against such exposures.
- Testing hypotheses among discordant siblings – we tested the four life-course hypotheses specifically as they applied to siblings who were discordant in terms of socioeconomic risk, and also the extent to which social and cultural capital could be observed to protect against socioeconomic risk, where siblings were discordant in terms of social and cultural capital.