Flores Manuel, Wolfe Barbara L
Research Institute for Evaluation and Public Policies (IRAPP), Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain.
Departments of Economics and Population Health Sciences, La Follette School of Public Affairs, and Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
Demography. 2023 Apr 1;60(2):431-459. doi: 10.1215/00703370-10579184.
We expand on previous studies investigating the links between early health and later health by examining four distinct dimensions of early-life health and multiple life course outcomes, including the age of onset of serious cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and several job-related health outcomes. The four dimensions of childhood health are mental, physical, self-reported general health, and severe headaches or migraines. The data set we use includes men and women in 21 countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. We find that the different dimensions of childhood health have unique ties to later outcomes. For men, early mental health problems play a stronger role for life course job-related health outcomes, but early poor/fair general health is more strongly linked to the spike in onset of CVDs in their late 40s. For women, these links between childhood health dimensions and life course outcomes are similar but are less clear-cut than for men. The spike in onset of CVDs in women's late 40s is driven by those with severe headaches or migraines, while those with early poor/fair general health or mental health problems do worse as captured by job-related outcomes. We also delve into and control for possible mediating factors. Exploring the links between several dimensions of childhood health and multiple health-related life course outcomes will enable a better understanding of how health inequalities originate and are shaped over the course of people's lives.
我们通过研究早期健康的四个不同维度以及多个生命历程结果，包括严重心血管疾病（CVD）的发病年龄和一些与工作相关的健康结果，扩展了先前关于早期健康与后期健康之间联系的研究。儿童健康的四个维度是心理、身体、自我报告的总体健康状况以及严重头痛或偏头痛。我们使用的数据集包括来自欧洲健康、老龄化和退休调查的21个国家的男性和女性。我们发现，儿童健康的不同维度与后期结果有着独特的关联。对于男性来说，早期心理健康问题对生命历程中与工作相关的健康结果影响更大，但早期较差/一般的总体健康状况与他们40多岁后期CVD发病激增的关联更强。对于女性来说，儿童健康维度与生命历程结果之间的这些联系相似，但不如男性那么明确。女性40多岁后期CVD发病激增是由患有严重头痛或偏头痛的人推动的，而那些早期总体健康状况较差/一般或有心理健康问题的人，在与工作相关的结果中表现更差。我们还深入研究并控制了可能的中介因素。探索儿童健康的几个维度与多个与健康相关的生命历程结果之间的联系，将有助于更好地理解健康不平等是如何在人们的生命过程中产生和形成的。
