Late-life health inequality is largely understood to be a product of social circumstances over the life course, such that structural opportunities influence degree of intracohort inequality. To date, little work has compared cumulative dis/advantage processes across cohorts to investigate this hypothesis. Drawing from the Health and Retirement Study, we examine the degree of heterogeneity within education groups among Black and White men, comparing two cohorts: HRS (b.1931–1941) and War Babies/Early Baby Boomers (b.1942–1953). Our multilevel trajectory models indicate increasing inequality with age in both cohorts. Participants with the lowest level of education in both cohorts have the greatest degree of heterogeneity in functional limitations, while the men with the highest level of education have the least heterogeneity. Our findings indicate that as college degrees became more common in the later cohort, men’s trajectories of functional limitations also became more heterogeneous. We discuss the implications for understanding CDA processes within cohorts.
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