4. Health development and school achievement Equality in health is an important tenet of the welfare states in the Nordic region. It is therefore essential to consider the importance of the health of school-age children in relation to school achievement. Question: Is there a relationship between physical and mental health and school achievement? There are many different questions that can be phrased including different aspects of physical and mental health indicators such as the following: Is there a relationship between the prevalence of neuropsychiatric problems and school achievement? Such relationships are possible to study by cross-sectional designs. However, an important consideration is the direction of the relationship, and to estimate this would require longitudinal designs. The level of education and years of schooling are associated with virtually all health outcomes: the higher the educational attainment, the better the health. 220,221,222 Two main explanatory pathways for these relationships have been presented: the social causation hypothesis and the hypothesis of health selection that can differ in importance at different periods of life course 223,224,225. Studies from different countries have shown that health factors such as self-rated health, psychosomatic symptoms, and long-term illness in
Kröger, H., Pakpahan, E., & Hoffmann, R. (2015). What causes health inequality? A systematic review on the relative importance of social causation and health selection. European Journal of Public Health, 25(6), 951–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/ eurpub/ckv1114 221 Moor, I., Spallek, J., & Richter, M. (2017). Explaining socioeconomic inequalities in self-rated health: A systematic review of the relative contribution of material, psychosocial and behavioural factors. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 71(6), 565–75. https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2016207589 222 Conti, G., Heckman, J., & Urzua, S. (2010). The education–health gradient. American Economic Review, 100(2), 234–238. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.100.2.234 223 Hoffmann, R., Kröger, H., & Pakpahan, E. (2018). Pathways between socioeconomic status and health: Does health selection or social causation dominate in Europe? Advances in Life Course Research, 36, 23–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2018.02.002 224 Lynch, J. L., & von Hippel, P. T. (2016). An education gradient in health, a health gradient in education, or a confounded gradient in both? Social Science and Medicine, 154, 18–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.SOCSCIMED.2016.02.029 225 West, P. (1991). Rethinking the health selection explanation for health inequalities. Social Science and Medicine, 32(4), 373–384. https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(91)90338-D 220
79
