An investigation carried out by researchers from Pompeu Fabra University shows that the situation during the first years of people’s lives (especially that related to socioeconomic status) has a decisive influence on education, on the life course and on health during the stages later.
The article, published on April 5, 2018 in the journal PLOS ONE, was written by Bruno Arpino, Jordi Gumà and Albert Julià, researchers from the University’s Department of Political and Social Sciences, within the framework of the European project “Care, Retirement & Wellbeing of Older People Across Different Welfare Regimes” (CREW).
According to Bruno Arpino, co-director of the Center for Research and Development in Survey Methodology (RECSM), “our results suggest that we must bet on public investments aimed at children, since they are expected to produce lasting effects on the people in the different phases of his life.
“We have verified that early life conditions indirectly affect health during later stages, as a consequence of their influence on education and on family and work trajectories,” the researchers say.
The study examines to what extent the effects of conditions during the first years of life on health in adulthood can be explained by educational level and life history, a concept that includes aspects such as fertility, personal ties and job occupation.
Low educational level has a negative influence on health
A section of the results of the work focuses specifically on the weight of education, which the authors consider key, on indirect effects. “Education is, in particular, the most powerful mediator of the effect of paternal socioeconomic status on health,” the authors state.
Specifically, between 66% and 75% of the indirect effects of low parental socioeconomic status in childhood on the three health outcomes considered in old age are explained by educational attainment for women (86% – 93% for males). men).
These data certify, according to the researchers, “that individuals from poorer families had fewer possibilities of reaching high levels of education and, in turn, these low levels of studies negatively influenced their health at later ages.”
How educational level and family and work trajectories jointly influence health
Other results refer to the effects of joint mediation between educational level, family and work history. In this area, it is worth noting that, in the case of women, between 22% and 42% of the effect of low parental socioeconomic level in childhood on the three aspects of health considered in advanced age is explained by educational level and family and work history. Even higher percentages are observed for men (35% – 57%).
In contrast, the effect of poor health during childhood relative to poor health at later ages is not significantly influenced by education or life history.
Data extracted from more than twelve thousand people in Europe
The researchers used secondary data (12,034 individuals aged 60 and over) from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which includes 27 European states and Israel. Based on the SHARE data, they have used three measures of health: self-perception of health, depression, and limitations in activities of daily living.
Thanks to the retrospective information obtained, they were able to measure conditions in the first stage of life (health during childhood and socioeconomic status of the family of origin) and the life trajectory. Regarding this last section, complete trajectories of education, fertility and personal ties of individuals between 15 and 59 years of age have been reconstructed. Data were treated separately by gender, first with multichannel sequence analysis and cluster analysis and finally with regression models.