The consequences of changing one’s socio-economic status over the life course—i.e. social mobility—for individual health are not well understood. Theories of the health implications of social mobility draw on the human perception of one’s changing conditions, but empirical studies mostly examine the health implications of moving from objectively defined indicators of parental socio-economic position such as education, occupation, or income, to own socio-economic position in adult life. Little is known about the consequences of individuals’ own assessment of changes in socio-economic position for health outcomes. In this study, we examine the association of social mobility and health in a unique sample of the Russian population after the transition to a market society. We take a broad perspective on social mobility, putting emphasis on subjectively perceived social mobility. Results show that individuals’ objective characteristics only partially explain the variation in their subjective perceptions of intergenerational mobility. Net of social origin and destination variables, subjective social mobility is associated with individuals’ health outcomes, as measured by the 12-Item Short Form Health Survey. Those who perceive being upwardly mobile report better health, and downward mobility is associated with poorer health. The association holds for mental and physical health, for perceived downward and upward social mobility, and for a general subjective measure of mobility and a subjective measure prompting respondents to only think of mobility in terms of occupation. These findings are robust to controlling for a rich set of socio-demographic predictors on childhood adversity, contemporaneous material wellbeing, and family-related circumstances. We conclude that a conventional focus on single socio-economic status dimensions such as occupation might be too narrow to capture the health consequences of social mobility.

在整个生命过程中改变一个人的社会经济地位（即社会流动性）对个人健康的影响尚不清楚。社会流动对健康影响的理论借鉴了人类对不断变化的条件的看法，但实证研究主要考察从客观定义的父母社会经济地位指标（如教育、职业或收入）转变为拥有社会地位的社会经济地位指标对健康的影响。 - 成人生活中的经济地位。关于个人对社会经济地位变化对健康结果的评估的后果知之甚少。在这项研究中，我们研究了向市场社会过渡后俄罗斯人口的独特样本中社会流动性和健康的关联。我们以广阔的视角看待社会流动性，强调主观感知的社会流动性。结果表明，个人的客观特征只能部分解释他们对代际流动的主观看法的差异。扣除社会出身和目的地变量后，主观社会流动性与个人健康结果相关，由 12 项短期健康调查衡量。那些认为向上流动的人报告说健康状况更好，而向下流动的人则与更差的健康状况有关。该协会支持心理和身体健康、感知的向下和向上的社会流动性，以及流动性的一般主观测量和促使受访者仅从职业方面考虑流动性的主观测量。这些发现对于控制关于童年逆境、同期物质福祉和家庭相关环境的丰富的社会人口预测因素是稳健的。我们的结论是，传统上关注单一的社会经济地位维度（如职业）可能过于狭窄，无法捕捉到社会流动对健康的影响。