Chronic conditions and child health: does income mediate?

Discussions of the income-child health gradient have often focused on the question of whether the association between household income and child health is attributable to children from low-income households experiencing more health shocks, responding less well to the health shocks they experience, or both. This question was originally posed by Currie and Stabile (2003), who produced evidence that children from lower-income households in Canada experienced more health shocks. However, few authors have been able to address these questions empirically, as suitable (panel) data have, until recently, been scarce. The current paper contributes to this small literature by producing new empirical evidence for Australia, using the Longitudinal Study of Australian (LSAC) to examine the question of how the income-child health gradient may be explained. The central results are that we find no evidence that children from low-income households are subject to more frequent health shocks (as measured by chronic conditions), and nor do we find that children from low-income households register any worse recovery from a health shock once it has occurred. Our findings are in contrast to those for the United States, as reported by Murasko (2008) and Condliffe and Link (2008). We speculate that the extensive and universal public healthcare system in Australia may offset some of the important health-related disadvantages that are associated with low incomes in other countries.