Poverty and health – does parenthood matter? Trends in income inequality in self-rated health among parents and non-parents in Germany from 2009 to 2024
Petra Rattay, Florian Beese, Stefanie Sperlich, Nico Dragano, Niels Michalski · 2026
Read Poverty and health – does parenthood matter? Trends in income inequality in self-rated health among parents and non-parents in Germany from 2009 to 2024 by Petra Rattay, Florian Beese, Stefanie Sperlich, Nico Dragano, Niels Michalski (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13159269.txt.
Description
Petra Rattay and co-authors track health gaps by income in Germany in a 2026 study. Their twist is parenthood: do parents and non-parents share the same trend? Data span nine surveys from 2009 to 2024 with 106,399 adults aged 25 to 59. Good self-rated health sat near three in four in 2009. It rose in the first COVID years, then fell to its low in 2024.
Poor health clung to low income in all years. From the mid 2010s, good health fell most in poor non-parents, for men first and then for women. Poor mothers joined the fall in the last wave. Gap grades back the same tale in both raw and rate terms. The authors say long strain from stacked crises may hit poor non-parents most. Parent ties may buffer health, they hint.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Petra Rattay, Florian Beese, Stefanie Sperlich, Nico Dragano, Niels Michalski |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 59 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |