Press Release

CHPPP Conference Examines Health and Education Links to Well-Being

Does your health status in utero or in early childhood determine how you will do in school and, by extension, how you will fare later in life?

Leading researchers will come together in a multidisciplinary conference to discuss ways in which health and education affect successful life outcomes. The conference, "Health and Attainment Over the Lifecourse: Reciprocal Influences from Before Birth to Old Age," will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., on Friday, May 16 at the University Club of Chicago, 76 E. Monroe St. (THE EVENT IS BY INVITATION ONLY.)

Many studies have shown that health and education have a large positive effect on well-being. New research shows that mothers' health before and during pregnancy, in addition to young children's health, might have long-term implications for health and attainment in adulthood. Accordingly, many have argued that policies to increase education and to improve child health represent two of the most effective means of improving physical and psychological well-being as well as socioeconomic status.

"We've made so much progress in the behavioral sciences, medicine, public health, and genetics over the past decades," said Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, director of Cells to Society (C2S): The Center on Social Disparities and Health at the Institute for Policy Research and professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University. "Yet recent studies show that life expectancy is declining for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder."

Chase-Lansdale, a conference organizer, pointed to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office that concludes that the life expectancy gap is growing between rich and poor and between those with the highest and lowest educational attainment.

"The conference will provide an invaluable opportunity for experts from the social and life sciences to discuss new directions in research," noted Ariel Kalil, director of the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy, associate professor of public policy at the University of Chicago's Harris School, and a co-organizer of the conference. "We're hoping to build interdisciplinary bridges to get a better idea of exactly how socioeconomic and health status are intertwined across the life course."

Economists, sociologists, demographers and developmental psychologists will discuss their latest research on reciprocal pathways linking health and attainment across the lifespan. In particular, the researchers will focus on how to interpret such linkages, the processes behind them, and how they might play out in various ethnic and socioeconomic groups. To examine the linkages, the researchers use a variety of long-term data sets, including the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and British National Child Development Survey.

In a plenary session, Bryan Samuels, chief of staff of the Chicago Public Schools, will discuss the interrelationships between and policy missions of the institutions serving low-income children's education and health needs in Chicago.

The conference is co-sponsored by Northwestern University's Cells to Society (C2S: The Center for Social Disparities at the Institute for Policy Research and the University of Chicago's Center for Human Potential and Public Policy at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies and Chapin Hall Center for Children, with additional support from the Center for Health and the Social Sciences.