Does childhood health affect chronic morbidity in later life?

Blackwell, Debra L.; Hayward, Mark D.; Crimmins, Eileen M.

doi:10.1016/s0277-9536(00)00230-6

Cited by 345 publications

(279 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…That is, studies have not distinguished among factors that occur early, intermediate, and late in the life course. Increasing evidence of the link between earlier life events and late-life health (e.g., Blackwell, Hayward & Crimmins, 2001;Blane, Higgs, Hyde & Wiggins, 2004;Hayward & Gorman, 2004;Kuh & Ben-Shlomo, 2004;Lawlor, Batty, Morton, Clark, Macintyre, & Leon, 2005;Luo & Waite, 2005) and between occupational risks and late-life disability (e.g., Crimmins & Hayward 2004;Hayward, Grady, Hardy & Sommers,1989;Reville & Schoeni, 2003) suggest that such factors may be particularly ripe for investigation in understanding trends.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Declines in late-life disability: The role of early- and mid-life factors

Freedman

Martin

Schoeni

et al. 2008

Social Science & Medicine

129

120

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Investigations into the causes of declines in late-life disability have largely focused on the role of contemporaneous factors. Adopting a life-course perspective as a backdrop, in this paper we ask whether there also has been a role for selected early-and mid-life factors in the decline, and if so whether these factors have been operating through changes in the risks of disability onset or recovery. Drawing on five waves from 1995 to 2004 of the US Health and Retirement Study, we found for the 75 and older population in the United States that the prevalence of difficulty with activities of daily living (ADL) declined from 30.2% in 1995 to 26.0% in 2004, whereas the trend in difficulty with instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) was flat. Onset of ADL limitations also was reduced during this period while recovery increased. Changes in the educational composition of the older population were linked to declines in the prevalence of ADL limitations, but there were also modest contributions of changes in mother's education, self-rated childhood health, and lifetime occupation. Declines in late-life vision impairments and increases in wealth also contributed substantially to the downward trend, and had chronic conditions not increased, it would have been even larger. Reductions in the onset of ADL limitations were partly driven by changes in educational attainment of respondents and their mothers and, in late-life, better vision and wealth. In contrast, the recovery trend was not accounted for by changes in early-or mid-life factors. We conclude that early-and mid-life factors have contributed along with late-life factors to U.S. late-life disability trends mainly through their influence on the onset of, rather than recovery from, limitations.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Declines in late-life disability: The role of early- and mid-life factors

Freedman

Martin

Schoeni

et al. 2008

Social Science & Medicine

129

120

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“…This prediction proved to be correct for such early life indicators as parental age at a person's conception (Gavrilov & Gavrilova, 1997a, b;2000) and the month of person's birth (Doblhammer, 1999;Gavrilov & Gavrilova, 1999). The idea of fetal origins of adult degenerative diseases and early life programming of late-life health and survival is being actively discussed in the scienti"c literature (Lucas, 1991;Barker, 1992Barker, , 1998Kuh & Ben-Shlomo, 1997;Leon et al, 1998;Lucas et al, 1999;Blackwell et al, 2001).…”

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confidence: 98%

The Reliability Theory of Aging and Longevity

Gavrilov

Gavrilova

2001

Journal of Theoretical Biology

422

248

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Reliability theory is a general theory about systems failure. It allows researchers to predict the age-related failure kinetics for a system of given architecture (reliability structure) and given reliability of its components. Reliability theory predicts that even those systems that are entirely composed of non-aging elements (with a constant failure rate) will nevertheless deteriorate (fail more often) with age, if these systems are redundant in irreplaceable elements. Aging, therefore, is a direct consequence of systems redundancy. Reliability theory also predicts the late-life mortality deceleration with subsequent leveling-o!, as well as the late-life mortality plateaus, as an inevitable consequence of redundancy exhaustion at extreme old ages. The theory explains why mortality rates increase exponentially with age (the Gompertz law) in many species, by taking into account the initial -aws (defects) in newly formed systems. It also explains why organisms &&prefer'' to die according to the Gompertz law, while technical devices usually fail according to the Weibull (power) law. Theoretical conditions are speci"ed when organisms die according to the Weibull law: organisms should be relatively free of initial #aws and defects. The theory makes it possible to "nd a general failure law applicable to all adult and extreme old ages, where the Gompertz and the Weibull laws are just special cases of this more general failure law. The theory explains why relative di!erences in mortality rates of compared populations (within a given species) vanish with age, and mortality convergence is observed due to the exhaustion of initial di!erences in redundancy levels. Overall, reliability theory has an amazing predictive and explanatory power with a few, very general and realistic assumptions. Therefore, reliability theory seems to be a promising approach for developing a comprehensive theory of aging and longevity integrating mathematical methods with speci"c biological knowledge. Academic Press

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“…For example, individuals who experienced health problems in mid-life might be more likely to experience health problems during late careers as well -given that health problems seem to have long-term consequences (Blackwell et al 2001) -and these preretirement health problems might increase the likelihood of early retirement. Those who invested more in education might be more likely to have a job characterized by a high level and broad scope of cognitive challenge during their late career (Hyllegard and Lavin 1992), which might make continued work more attractive.…”

Section: Linking Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Retirement Processes: The Role of Life Histories

Damman

2016

The Palgrave Handbook of Age Diversity and Work

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Does childhood health affect chronic morbidity in later life?

Cited by 345 publications

References 37 publications

Declines in late-life disability: The role of early- and mid-life factors

Declines in late-life disability: The role of early- and mid-life factors

The Reliability Theory of Aging and Longevity

Understanding Retirement Processes: The Role of Life Histories

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