Childhood socioeconomic position and adult mental wellbeing: Evidence from four British birth cohort studies

Wood, N. C.; Bann, David; Hardy, Rebecca; Gale, Catharine R.; Goodman, Alissa; Crawford, Claire; Stafford, Mai

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0185798

Cited by 22 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 38 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Additionally, life-courses are used to pinpoint where people are in their personal development process, drawing on characteristics that are typical for different phases of the life-course [1, 5, 6]. Because of their broad applicability, researchers interested in all age groups and in a variety of topics use life-courses to study, for example, the effects of childhood living conditions, the participation in further education at different ages, and pathways to financial well-being in retirement [7–11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capturing the diversity of working age life-courses: A European perspective on cohorts born before 1945

Komp-Leukkunen¹

2019

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Life-courses describe people’s activities from the cradle to the grave. Because life-courses are typically complex, models are used to simplify their description. The most commonly used model is tripartite, representing lives in subsequent periods of education, work, and retirement. However, researchers criticize this model as limited in the activities considered, overly simplistic in the activity sequence, and blind to variation between life-courses. This article explores working age life-courses, which typically show high diversity. Multichannel sequence and cluster analyses are conducted on people’s activities from age 15 to 65. Data stem from the life-history interviews of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, capturing cohorts born before 1945. Findings show that three out of four working age life-courses are in line with the tripartite model. This share is particularly high among men, the cohort born 1935 to 1944, and in Northern and Eastern Europe. In contrast, a considerable share of women spent their working age on homemaking, especially women born before 1935, and those living in Southern Europe. Finally, a smaller number of men spent their working age on paid work, followed by a period of illness or of non-employment. The working age life-course patterns identified are used to develop alternative life-course models. However, for a parsimonious solution, the use of two models suffices. A combination of the tripartite model and the model equating middle age to homemaking captures the lives of more than nine out of ten older Europeans. The prevalence of working age life-course patterns in a population is country-specific, and the country differences align with the welfare regimes. This perspective makes working age life-courses characteristics of a society that can be used to map social inequalities at the macro-level and capture social change over time.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capturing the diversity of working age life-courses: A European perspective on cohorts born before 1945

Komp-Leukkunen¹

2019

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…There is tentative evidence that another underlying difference between these two groups and between those with firmer retirement plans and plans to retire in the medium term may map onto socioeconomic differences. Socioeconomic factors can influence both decisions around retirement planning [10,33] and wellbeing [34]. While our prior typology was deliberately simplified and naïve, it is clear that the omission of socioeconomic circumstances leaves an incomplete picture.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, the current COVID-19 pandemic has brought the issue of retirement from health and social services to greater prominence. Many frontline workers have returned from retirement to contribute to frontline responses to the pandemic, either through formal recruitment campaigns or voluntary schemes [34,35]. This underlines the skill and expertise that people are capable of bringing to services in the years beyond which they would have anticipated working.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing the Finish Line? Retirement Perceptions and Wellbeing among Social Workers

Moriarty

Gillen

Mallett

et al. 2020

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Planning for future health and social services (HSS) workforces must be informed by an understanding of how workers view their work within the context of their life and the challenges they will face across the course of life. There is a range of policies and provisions that states and organisations can adopt to create sustainable careers, support wellbeing at work, and extend working lives where appropriate, but the potential impact of these policies on the make-up of the workforce remains under investigation. This paper makes the case that service planners need to appreciate complex interplay between wellbeing and career decisions when planning the future workforce. It makes use of a recent survey of United Kingdom (UK) social workers (n = 1434) to illustrate this interplay in two ways. First, we present the analysis of how social workers’ perception of retirement and extended working lives are associated with dimensions of Work-Related Quality of Life (WRQL). We find that social workers who agreed that a flexible working policy would encourage them to delay their retirement scored lower on the Home-Work Interface and Control at Work dimensions of WRQL, while social workers who indicated a perception that their employer would not wish them to work beyond a certain age had lower Job and Career Satisfaction scores. Second, we propose a new typology of retirement outlooks using latent class analysis of these attitudinal measures. An 8-class solution is proposed, and we demonstrate the predictive utility of this scheme. Results are discussed in terms of the challenges for ageing Western populations and the usefulness of analysis such as this in estimating the potential uptake and impact of age-friendly policies and provisions.

show abstract

“…Our analysis builds on the framework adopted by Wood et al 14 on the prediction of mental well-being as a single outcome15 across four UK birth cohort studies, which showed that childhood SES is directly and indirectly (through adult socio-economic pathways) linked to adult EWB. We expand on their approach by including four outcome measures, although for a single birth cohort.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the role of early-life circumstances, abilities and achievements on well-being at age 50 years: evidence from the 1958 British birth cohort study

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ObjectivesWe aim to examine the relative contributions of pathways from middle childhood/adolescence to mid-life well-being, health and cognition, in the context of family socio-economic status (SES) at birth, educational achievement and early-adulthood SES. Our approach is largely exploratory, suspecting that the strongest mediators between childhood circumstances and mid-life physical and emotional well-being may be cognitive performance during school years, material and behavioural difficulties, and educational achievement. We also explore whether the effects of childhood circumstances on mid-life physical and emotional well-being differ between men and women.Setting/participantsData were from the National Child Development Study, a fully-representative British birth cohort sample of 17 415 people born in 1 week in 1958.Primary/secondary outcome measuresOur four primary mid-life outcome measures are: cognitive performance, physical and emotional well-being and quality of life. Our intermediate adult outcomes are early-adulthood social class and educational/vocational qualifications.ResultsUsing structural equation modelling, we explore numerous pathways through childhood and early adulthood which are significantly linked to our outcomes. We specifically examine the mediating effects of the following: cognitive ability at ages 7, 11 and 16 years; childhood psychological issues; family material difficulties at age 7 years: housing, unemployment, finance; educational/vocational qualifications and social class position at age 42 years.We find that social class at birth has a strong indirect effect on the age 50 outcomes via its influence on cognitive performance in childhood and adolescence, educational attainment and mid-life social class position, together with small direct effects on qualifications and social class position at age 42 years. Teenage cognitive performance has a strong positive effect on later physical health for women, while educational/vocational qualifications have a stronger positive effect on emotional well-being for men.ConclusionOur findings provide an understanding of the legacy of early life on multiple aspects of mid-life health, well-being, cognition and quality of life, showing stronger mediated links for men from childhood social class position to early adult social class position. The observed effect of qualifications supports those arguing that education is positively associated with subsequent cognitive functioning.

show abstract

Childhood socioeconomic position and adult mental wellbeing: Evidence from four British birth cohort studies

Cited by 22 publications

References 38 publications

Capturing the diversity of working age life-courses: A European perspective on cohorts born before 1945

Capturing the diversity of working age life-courses: A European perspective on cohorts born before 1945

Seeing the Finish Line? Retirement Perceptions and Wellbeing among Social Workers

Exploring the role of early-life circumstances, abilities and achievements on well-being at age 50 years: evidence from the 1958 British birth cohort study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About