Childhood Experiences and Men’s Mortality

What factors affect human mortality? Most studies in this area have focused only on conditions occurring relatively late in a person’s life, but Rice sociologist Bridget Gorman and Mark Hayward of Penn State wondered whether or not men’s childhood experiences influenced their mortality.

Gorman and Hayward examined data from the National Longitudinal Survey of American men who fell between the ages of 45 and 59 in 1966. The subjects were interviewed through 1990, providing detailed information about their lifestyles, adult behavior, education, parents‚ jobs, and economic background. What the researchers found is evidence that some childhood circumstances can increase risks of early mortality for men: growing up in blue-collar homes, living in urban areas, residing with biological fathers but not biological mothers, and having low levels of education, mothers who worked outside the home, and parents who were both native-born citizens of the United States.

Adult lifestyle factors did have a mediating affect on most of these early circumstances, however, leading the researchers to conclude that the effect of childhood experiences on men’s mortality is indirect. “For example,” Gorman says, “the occupations of the subjects’ fathers did affect their mortality risk, but when adjusted for their own occupation and income when older, the effect went away.” Yet, she notes, the occupations of men’s parents suggest the kinds of jobs and incomes men would have later in life, thus becoming a factor impacting their health as adults.

The only childhood circumstance that had a direct impact on the men’s mortality was having parents who were foreign-born—and that was a positive one. Gorman says there are a number of possible explanations for this, one being selective migration. “If a person is going to move to another country,” she says, “he or she is probably fairly healthy and resourceful.” However, research also has shown that the longer people who are foreign-born stay in this country, the poorer their health becomes.

The study was presented in “The Long Arm of Childhood: The Influence of Early-Life Social Conditions on Men’s Mortality,” published in the February 2004 issue of Demography.