Is college education an equalizer for social disparities in health literacy? A case study in Shanghai, China.

Objectives: The aim of the study was to illustrate the immediate effect of the college education process (across college grades) on the strength of association between parental education and college attendees' health literacy.

Methods: Cross-sectional analysis was conducted based on data from a random sample of students in one university in Shanghai, China ( = 574). Exploratory factor analysis was used to generate factors of different dimensions of health literacy. Ordinary least square regression models were estimated to investigate how college education process alters the family-based disparity in health literacy.

Results: The link between parental education and health-related skills did not vary significantly across grades of participants, but participants in their third ( < 0.05) and fourth year ( < 0.001) revealed a significantly weaker association between health-promoting proactivity and parental education, relative to the first-year counterparts. Also, the impact of parental education on health-related attitudes significantly declined among the fourth-year seniors, compared with first-year students ( < 0.05).

Conclusions: Higher education experience is an important mechanism to alleviate the socioeconomic gap in health literacy. Such an equalizer effect, nevertheless, is contingent on the particular dimensions of health literacy.