Conditional wealth to estimate association of wealth mobility with health and human capital in low- and middle-income country cohorts
Jithin Sam Varghese (1), Clive Osmond (2), Aryeh D. Stein (3)
1 Nutrition and Health Sciences Program, Laney Graduate School, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
2 Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
3 Hubert Department of Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
Temporally harmonized asset indices allow us to study changes in relative wealth (mean, variance, social mobility) over time in the same scale. Conditional measures are unexplained residuals of an indicator regressed on its past values. Using such measures that are commonly used to study the relative importance of key life stages for anthropometric growth, we could potentially identify life stages during which changes in relative wealth are important. We discuss the assumptions, strengths and limitations of the methodology that allows us to study the role of wealth over the life course in low- and middle-income countries. We provide an illustrative example using a publicly available longitudinal dataset and show how relative wealth changes at different life stages are associated with body mass index in adulthood.