Myrskylä Mikko, Elo Irma T, Kohler Iliana V, Martikainen Pekka
Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK; Population Research Unit, Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 18, 00014, Finland.
Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Locust Walk, McNeil Building, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6299, USA; Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Locust Walk, McNeil Building, Ste. 113, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6299, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2014 Oct;119:215-23. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.06.008. Epub 2014 Jun 12.
The association between advanced maternal and paternal ages at birth and increased mortality among adult offspring is often attributed to parental reproductive aging, e.g., declining oocyte or sperm quality. Less attention has been paid to alternative mechanisms, including parental socio-demographic characteristics or the timing of parental death. Moreover, it is not known if the parental age-adult mortality association is mediated by socioeconomic attainment of the children, or if it varies over the lifecourse of the adult children. We used register-based data drawn from the Finnish 1950 census (sample size 89,737; mortality follow-up 1971-2008) and discrete-time survival regression with logit link to analyze these alternative mechanisms in the parental age-offspring mortality association when the children were aged 35-49 and 50-72. Consistent with prior literature, we found that adult children of older parents had increased mortality relative to adults whose parents were aged 25-29 at the time of birth. For example, maternal and paternal ages 40-49 were associated with mortality odds ratios (ORs) of 1.31 (p<.001) and 1.22 (p<.01), respectively, for offspring mortality at ages 35-49. At ages 50-72 advanced parental age also predicted higher mortality, though not as strongly. Adjustment for parental socio-demographic characteristics (education, occupation, family size, household crowding, language) weakened the associations only slightly. Adjustment for parental survival, measured by whether the parents were alive when the child reached age 35, reduced the advanced parental age coefficients substantially and to statistically insignificant levels. These results indicate that the mechanism behind the advanced parental age-adult offspring mortality association is mainly social, reflecting early parental loss and parental characteristics, rather than physiological mechanisms reflecting reproductive aging.
出生时父母年龄较大与成年子女死亡率增加之间的关联通常归因于父母的生殖衰老，例如卵母细胞或精子质量下降。人们较少关注其他机制，包括父母的社会人口特征或父母死亡时间。此外，尚不清楚父母年龄与成人死亡率之间的关联是否由子女的社会经济成就介导，或者它是否会在成年子女的生命历程中有所变化。我们使用了基于芬兰1950年人口普查的登记数据（样本量89737；死亡率随访时间为1971 - 2008年）以及具有logit链接的离散时间生存回归，来分析当子女年龄在35 - 49岁和50 - 72岁时，父母年龄与子女死亡率关联中的这些替代机制。与先前的文献一致，我们发现与出生时父母年龄在25 - 29岁的成年人相比，父母年龄较大的成年子女死亡率更高。例如，对于35 - 49岁子女的死亡率，母亲年龄40 - 49岁和父亲年龄40 - 49岁的死亡率比值比（OR）分别为1.31（p <.001）和1.22（p <.01）。在50 - 72岁时，父母年龄较大也预示着更高的死亡率，尽管程度没那么强烈。对父母社会人口特征（教育程度、职业、家庭规模、家庭拥挤程度、语言）进行调整后，这种关联仅略有减弱。通过孩子35岁时父母是否健在来衡量的父母生存情况调整后，父母年龄较大的系数大幅降低至统计学上不显著的水平。这些结果表明，父母年龄较大与成年子女死亡率关联背后的机制主要是社会性的，反映了父母过早离世和父母特征，而非反映生殖衰老的生理机制。
