IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v68y2009i9p1565-1573.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do childhood cognitive ability or smoking behaviour explain the influence of lifetime socio-economic conditions on premature adult mortality in a British post war birth cohort?

Author

Listed:
  • Kuh, Diana
  • Shah, Imran
  • Richards, Marcus
  • Mishra, Gita
  • Wadsworth, Michael
  • Hardy, Rebecca

Abstract

Poor childhood and adult socio-economic conditions, lower childhood cognitive ability and cigarette smoking are all associated with adult mortality risk. Using data on 4458 men and women aged 60 years from a British birth cohort study, we investigated the extent to which these risk factors are part of the same pathway linking childhood experience to adult survival. Compared with women from non-manual origins, men from non-manual origins, women and men from manual origins, and those with missing data on father's social class had about double the risk of mortality between 26 and 60 years. Cox proportional hazards models showed that these differences were reduced but remained significant after adjusting for childhood cognitive ability, adult socio-economic conditions and smoking. Higher childhood ability increased survival chances by securing better adult socio-economic conditions, such as home ownership, which was strongly associated with survival. These findings were similar for cardiovascular and cancer mortality.

Suggested Citation

  • Kuh, Diana & Shah, Imran & Richards, Marcus & Mishra, Gita & Wadsworth, Michael & Hardy, Rebecca, 2009. "Do childhood cognitive ability or smoking behaviour explain the influence of lifetime socio-economic conditions on premature adult mortality in a British post war birth cohort?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(9), pages 1565-1573, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:68:y:2009:i:9:p:1565-1573
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(09)00089-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wadsworth, M. E. J. & Butterworth, S. L. & Hardy, R. J. & Kuh, D. J. & Richards, M. & Langenberg, C. & Hilder, W. S. & Connor, M., 2003. "The life course prospective design: an example of benefits and problems associated with study longevity," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 57(11), pages 2193-2205, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Helen Cheng & Adrian Furnham, 2013. "Factors Influencing Adult Physical Health after Controlling for Current Health Conditions: Evidence from a British Cohort," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(6), pages 1-7, June.
    2. Hannes Kröger & Rasmus Hoffmann & Lasse Tarkiainen & Pekka Martikainen, 2018. "Comparing Observed and Unobserved Components of Childhood: Evidence From Finnish Register Data on Midlife Mortality From Siblings and Their Parents," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(1), pages 295-318, February.
    3. Bratsberg, Bernt & Rogeberg, Ole, 2017. "Childhood socioeconomic status does not explain the IQ-mortality gradient," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 148-154.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert Stewart & Rebecca Hardy & Marcus Richards, 2015. "Associations between Skeletal Growth in Childhood and Cognitive Function in Mid-Life in a 53-Year Prospective Birth Cohort Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-10, April.
    2. McMunn, Anne & Bartley, Mel & Kuh, Diana, 2006. "Women's health in mid-life: Life course social roles and agency as quality," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(6), pages 1561-1572, September.
    3. Hatch, Stephani L. & Jones, Peter B. & Kuh, Diana & Hardy, Rebecca & Wadsworth, Michael E.J. & Richards, Marcus, 2007. "Childhood cognitive ability and adult mental health in the British 1946 birth cohort," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(11), pages 2285-2296, June.
    4. Bann, David & Hardy, Rebecca & Cooper, Rachel & Lashen, Hany & Keevil, Brian & Wu, Frederick C.W. & Holly, Jeff M.P. & Ong, Ken K. & Ben-Shlomo, Yoav & Kuh, Diana, 2015. "Socioeconomic conditions across life related to multiple measures of the endocrine system in older adults: Longitudinal findings from a British birth cohort study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 190-199.
    5. Collishaw, Stephan & Goodman, Robert & Pickles, Andrew & Maughan, Barbara, 2007. "Modelling the contribution of changes in family life to time trends in adolescent conduct problems," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(12), pages 2576-2587, December.
    6. Rosemary Abbott & George Ploubidis & Felicia Huppert & Diana Kuh & Tim Croudace, 2010. "An Evaluation of the Precision of Measurement of Ryff’s Psychological Well-Being Scales in a Population Sample," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 97(3), pages 357-373, July.
    7. Mishra, Gita & Kuh, Diana, 2006. "Perceived change in quality of life during the menopause," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 93-102, January.
    8. Tarani Chandola & Paul Clarke & J. N. Morris & David Blane, 2006. "Pathways between education and health: a causal modelling approach," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 169(2), pages 337-359, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:68:y:2009:i:9:p:1565-1573. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.