Does childhood health affect chronic morbidity in later life?
Abstract
Our analysis examines whether childhood health has long-term and enduring consequences for chronic morbidity. As a part of this analysis, we address two methodological issues of concern in the literature. Is adult height a surrogate for childhood health experiences in modeling chronic disease in later life? And, are the effects of adult socioeconomic status on chronic disease overestimated when childhood health is not accounted for? The analysis is based on a topical module to the third wave of the Health and Retirement Study, a representative survey of Americans aged 55-65 in 1996. Our results support the hypothesis that poor childhood health increases morbidity in later life. This association was found for cancer, lung disease, cardiovascular conditions, and arthritis/rheumatism. The associations were highly persistent in the face of statistical controls for both adult and childhood socioeconomic status. No support was found for using adult height as a proxy for the effects of childhood health experiences. Further, the effects of adult socioeconomic status were not overestimated when childhood health was excluded from the explanatory models. Our results point to the importance of an integrated health care policy based on the premise of maximizing health over the entire life cycle.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Other medical conditions such as cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and diabetes are disproportionately distributed according to socio-demographic characteristics.
“other medical conditions, such as cardiovascular disease (Galobardes, Smith, and Lynch 2006; Karlamangla, Singer, Williams, Schwartz, Matthews, Kiefe, and Seeman 2005), arthritis and diabetes (Blackwell, Hayward, and Crimmins 2001), are disproportionately distributed according to socio-demographic characteristics.”
From Disproportionality and Learning Disabilities: Parsing Apart Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Language (2011) · cites this paper as Blackwell, Hayward, and Crimmins 2001
Cites
Martyn, C., Barker, D., & Osmond, C. (1996) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(96)04257-2 · Cited by 381 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Child abuse: Adolescent records vs. adult recall
Femina, D. D., Yeager, C. A., & Lewis, D. O. (1990) · Child Abuse & Neglect · doi:10.1016/0145-2134(90)90033-p · Cited by 8,820 · see citing works
Longevity Among Hunter‐ Gatherers: A Cross‐Cultural Examination
Gurven, M., & Kaplan, H. (2007) · Population and Development Review · doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2007.00171.x · Cited by 670 · see citing works
Cumulative advantage processes as mechanisms of inequality in life course health
Willson, A. E., Shuey, K. M., & Elder, Jr. (2007) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/512712 · Cited by 541 · see citing works
The 2030 Problem: Caring for Aging Baby Boomers
Knickman, J. R., & Snell, E. K. (2002) · Health Services Research · doi:10.1034/j.1600-0560.2002.56.x · Cited by 510 · see citing works
The long shadow cast by childhood physical and mental problems on adult life
Goodman, A., Joyce, R., & Smith, J. P. (2011) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1016970108 · Cited by 449 · see citing works
The significance of socioeconomic status in explaining the racial gap in chronic health conditions
Hayward, M. D., Miles, T. P., Crimmins, E. M., & Yang, Y. (2000) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2657519 · Cited by 466 · see citing works
Self-citationGenetic analysis of social-class mobility in five longitudinal studies
Belsky, D. W., Domingue, B. W., Wedow, R., Arseneault, L., Boardman, J. D., Caspi, A., Conley, D., Fletcher, J. M., Freese, J., Herd, P., et al. (2018) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1801238115 · Cited by 315 · see citing works
Reproducing inequalities: luck, wallets, and the enduring effects of childhood health.
Palloni, A. (2006) · Demography · doi:10.1353/dem.2006.0036 · Cited by 298 · see citing works
Haas, S. A. (2006) · Journal of Health and Social Behavior · doi:10.1177/002214650604700403 · Cited by 298 · see citing works
Cumulative Childhood Adversity, Educational Attainment, and Active Life Expectancy Among U.S. Adults
Montez, J. K., & Hayward, M. D. (2014) · Demography · doi:10.1007/s13524-013-0261-x · Cited by 289 · see citing works
Self-citationPudrovska, T., Schieman, S., Pearlin, L. I., & Nguyen, K. (2005) · Journal of Aging and Health · doi:10.1177/0898264305279874 · Cited by 256 · see citing works
Disproportionality and Learning Disabilities: Parsing Apart Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Language
Shifrer, D., Muller, C., & Callahan, R. (2011) · Journal of Learning Disabilities · doi:10.1177/0022219410374236 · Cited by 241 · see citing works
McDade, T. W., Rutherford, J., Adair, L., & Kuzawa, C. W. (2010) · Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2009.1795 · Cited by 162 · see citing works
Friedman, E. M., Montez, J. K., Sheehan, C. M., Guenewald, T. L., & Seeman, T. E. (2015) · Journal of Aging and Health · doi:10.1177/0898264315580122 · Cited by 145 · see citing works
Mejía, J. F., Choy, S. L., Mengersen, K., & Morawska, L. (2011) · Atmospheric Environment · doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2010.11.009 · Cited by 131 · see citing works
Belsky, D. W., Caspi, A., Cohen, H. J., Kraus, W. E., Ramrakha, S., Poulton, R., & Moffitt, T. E. (2017) · Aging Cell · doi:10.1111/acel.12591 · Cited by 114 · see citing works
“older adults, and predict aging outcomes in these samples (Blackwell et al. 2001).”
BackgroundChildhood and later life stressors and increased inflammatory gene expression at older ages
Levine, M. E., Cole, S. W., Weir, D. R., & Crimmins, E. M. (2015) · Social Science & Medicine · doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.01.030 · Cited by 106 · see citing works
Self-citationThe lasting legacy of childhood adversity for disease risk in later life
McCrory, C., Dooley, C., Layte, R., & Kenny, R. A. (2015) · Health Psychology · doi:10.1037/hea0000147 · Cited by 104 · see citing works
Reither, E. N., Olshansky, S. J., & Yang, Y. (2011) · Health Affairs · doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2011.0092 · Cited by 69 · see citing works
Childhood adversities and health variations among middle-aged men: a retrospective lifecourse study
Elstad, J. I. (2005) · European Journal of Public Health · doi:10.1093/eurpub/cki114 · Cited by 57 · see citing works
Long-Term Health Benefits of Occupational Licensing: Evidence from Midwifery Laws
Noghanibehambari, H., & Fletcher, J. (2023) · Journal of Health Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102807 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
- Authors
- Blackwell, D. L., Hayward, M. D., & Crimmins, E. M.
- Affiliations
- National Center for Health Statistics (US)
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- University of Southern California (US)
- Corresponding author
- Blackwell, Debra L
- Venue
- Social Science & Medicine
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2001-04
- Volume
- 52
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1269-1284
- ISSN
- 0277-9536 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2127102393
- Cited by
- 424
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 17 · 2014: 23 · 2013: 25 · 2012: 19
- FWCI
- 13.53
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Social Science & Medicine (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute on Aging (T32AG00208, R01 AG-11235, T32AG000208, R01AG011758, R01 AG11758, R01AG011235, U01AG009740)
- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Birth, Development, and Health
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Aging, Health, and Disability
- Keywords
- child health, chronic morbidity, adult height, socioeconomic status, cancer, lung disease, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, life course, Health and Retirement Study, health policy
- MeSH terms
- Age Factors, Autoimmune Diseases, Body Height, Child, Child Welfare, Chronic Disease, Communicable Diseases, Cultural Deprivation, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Morbidity, Retirement, Risk Factors, Socioeconomic Factors, United States, Prevalence
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
