Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T07:25:50.075Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Childhood living conditions, education and health among the oldest old in Sweden

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2015

HANNA BERNDT  and
STEFAN FORS
HANNA BERNDT*
Affiliation:
Aging Research Center, Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University, Sweden. Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Gothenburg University, Sweden.
STEFAN FORS
Affiliation:
Aging Research Center, Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University, Sweden.
*
Address for correspondence: Hanna Berndt, Aging Research Center, Gävlegatan 16, SE-11330 Stockholm, Sweden E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The objectives were to investigate the associations between social and financial living conditions in childhood, education and morbidity in old age. The study population (N = 591; 76+ years old) was assembled from two nationally representative Swedish surveys, in 1968 and 2011, that together made longitudinal analysis possible. Morbidity in old age comprised self-reported measures of musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular disease, self-rated health and impaired mobility. There were no independent associations between adverse childhood living conditions and morbidity. However, adverse childhood living conditions were associated with an increased likelihood of low education. Moreover, low education was associated with a higher probability of health problems in old age. The results did not show any associations between adverse childhood conditions and late-life morbidity. However, adverse childhood conditions were associated with lower levels of education which, in turn, was associated with health problems and attrition from the study. These results suggest that adverse childhood conditions may indeed be associated with health and survival in old age, but mainly through mechanisms acting earlier in the lifecourse.

Keywords

childhood living conditionslifecourseeducationold agemorbidityhealth
Type
Articles
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , March 2016 , pp. 631 - 648
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agahi, N., Shaw, B. A. and Fors, S. 2014. Social and economic conditions in childhood and the progression of functional health problems from midlife into old age. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 68, 8, 734–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Andersson, L. G., Erikson, R. and Wärneryd, B. 1981. Att beskriva den sociala strukturen. Utvärdering av 1974 års förslag till socioekonomisk indelning. Statistisk Tidskrift, 19, 2, 113–36.Google Scholar
Barker, D. J. P. 1994. Mothers, Babies, and Disease in Later Life. BMJ Publishing Group, London.Google Scholar
Barker, D. J. P. 2012. Developmental origins of chronic disease. Public Health, 126, 3, 185–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ben-Shlomo, Y. and Kuh, D. 2002. A life course approach to chronic disease epidemiology: conceptual models, empirical challenges and interdisciplinary perspectives. International Journal of Epidemiology, 31, 2, 285–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Campbell, F., Conti, G., Heckman, J. J., Moon, S. H., Pinto, R., Pungello, E. and Pan, Y. 2014. Early childhood investments substantially boost adult health. Science, 343, 6178, 1478–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Demakakos, P., Nazroo, J., Breeze, E. and Marmot, M. 2008. Socioeconomic status and health: the role of subjective social status. Social Science & Medicine, 67, 2, 330–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Diderichsen, F. and Hallqvist, J. 1997. Trends in occupational mortality among middle aged men in Sweden 1961–1990. International Journal of Epidemiology, 26, 4, 782–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dowd, J. B. and Hamoudi, A. 2014. Is life expectancy really falling for groups of low socio-economic status? Lagged selection bias and artefactual trends in mortality. International Journal of Epidemiology, 43, 4, 983–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferraro, K. F. and Shippee, T. P. 2009. Aging and cumulative inequality: how does inequality get under the skin? The Gerontologist, 49, 3, 333–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferraro, K. F., Shippee, T. P. and Schafer, M. H. 2008. Cumulative inequality theory for research on aging and the life course. In Bengtson, V. L., Silverstein, M., Putney, N. M. and Gans, D. (eds), Handbook of Theories of Aging. Second edition, Springer, New York, 413–33.Google Scholar
Fors, S., Lennartsson, C. and Lundberg, O. 2008. Health inequalities among older adults in Sweden 1991–2002. European Journal of Public Health, 18, 2, 138–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fors, S., Lennartsson, C. and Lundberg, O. 2009. Childhood living conditions, socioeconomic position in adulthood, and cognition in later life: exploring the associations. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 64B, 6, 750–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fors, S., Lennartsson, C. and Lundberg, O. 2011. Live long and prosper? Childhood living conditions, marital status, social class in adulthood and mortality during mid-life: a cohort study. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 39, 2, 179–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Galobardes, B., Smith, G. D. and Lynch, J. W. 2006. Systematic review of the influence of childhood socioeconomic circumstances on risk for cardiovascular disease in adulthood. Annals of Epidemiology, 4, 2, 91–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilman, S. E., Kawachi, I., Fitzmaurice, G. M. and Buka, S. L. 2002. Socioeconomic status in childhood and the lifetime risk of major depression. International Journal of Epidemiology, 31, 2, 359–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hardy, S. E. 2009. Missing data: a special challenge in aging research. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 57, 4, 722–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelfve, S., Thorslund, M. and Lennartsson, C. 2013. Sampling and non-response bias on health outcomes in surveys of the oldest old. European Journal of Ageing, 10, 3, 237–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krieger, N., Chen, J. T. and Selby, J. V. 2001. Class inequalities in women's health. Public Health, 115, 3, 175–85.Google ScholarPubMed
Kuh, D. and Ben-Shlomo, Y. 2004. Introduction. In Kuh, D. and Ben-Shlomo, Y. (eds), A Life Course Approach to Chronic Disease Epidemiology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 3–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuh, D., Ben-Shlomo, Y., Lynch, J., Hallqvist, J. and Power, C. 2003. Life course epidemiology. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 57, 10, 778–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lawlor, D. A., Sterne, J. A. C., Tynelius, P., Davey Smith, G. and Rasmussen, F. 2006. Association of childhood socioeconomic position with cause-specific mortality in a prospective record linkage study of 1,839,384 individuals. American Journal of Epidemiology, 164, 9, 907–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lennartsson, C., Agahi, N., Hols-Salén, L., Kelfve, S., Kåreholt, I., Lundberg, O., Parker, M. G. and Thorslund, M. 2014. Data resource profile: the Swedish Panel Study of Living Conditions of the Oldest Old (SWEOLD). International Journal of Epidemiology, 43, 3, 731–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lundberg, O. 1993. The impact of childhood living conditions on illness and mortality in adulthood. Social Science & Medicine, 36, 8, 1047–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lundberg, O. 1997. Childhood conditions, sense of coherence, social class and adult ill health: exploring their theoretical and empirical relations. Social Science & Medicine 44, 6, 821–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mackenbach, J. 2012. The persistence of health inequalities in modern welfare states: the explanation of a paradox. Social Science & Medicine, 75, 4, 761–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mood, C. 2010. Logistic regression: why we cannot do what we think we can do, and what we can do about it. European Sociological Review, 2, 1, 67–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Power, C. and Kuh, D. 2006. Life course development on unequal health. In Siegrist, J. and Marmot, M. (eds), Social Inequalities in Health: New Evidence and Policy Implications. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 27–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robine, J.-M. and Michel, J.-P. 2004. Looking forward to a general theory on population aging. Journals of Gerontology: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 59A, 6, 590–7.Google Scholar
Rosvall, M., Chaix, B., Lynch, J., Lindström, M. and Merlo, J. 2006. Similar support for three different life course socioeconomic models on predicting premature cardiovascular mortality and all-cause mortality. BMC Public Health, 6, 1, 203.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schafer, M. H. and Ferraro, K. F. 2012. Childhood misfortune as a threat to successful aging: avoiding disease. The Gerontologist, 52, 1, 111–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schafer, M. H. and Ferraro, K. F. 2013. Childhood misfortune and adult health: enduring and cascadic effects on somatic and psychological symptoms? Journal of Aging and Health, 25, 1, 3–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Singh-Manoux, A., Marmot, M. G. and Adler, N. E. 2005. Does subjective social status predict health and change in health status better than objective status? Psychosomatic Medicine, 67, 6, 855–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stringhini, S., Dugravot, A., Kivimaki, M., Shipley, M., Zins, M., Goldberg, M., Ferrie, J. E. and Singh-Manoux, A. 2011. Do different measures of early life socioeconomic circumstances predict adult mortality? Evidence from the British Whitehall II and French GAZEL studies. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 65, 12, 1097–103.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wadsworth, M. E. J. 1997. Health inequalities in the life course perspective. Social Science & Medicine, 44, 6, 859–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wamala, S. P., Lynch, J. and Kaplan, G. A. 2001. Women's exposure to early and later life socioeconomic disadvantage and coronary heart disease risk: the Stockholm Female Coronary Risk Study. International Journal of Epidemiology, 30, 2, 275–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed