Adverse childhood circumstances, life course trajectories and allostatic load in later life
The project explored the links between childhood circumstances, life course trajectories and health in later life. Adverse childhood conditions are known antecedents of poor later life health. In addition to having an immediate health effect that remains apparent in later life, they may make people more likely to embark on a life course trajectory filled with experiences that are detrimental for health. The project extended earlier social science research about the links between childhood circumstances and later life health in two ways. First, it took a more comprehensive perspective on the life course than is commonly done by (a) developing a typology of work-family life course trajectories, (b) exploring whether particular childhood circumstances are associated with having particular types of work-family life course trajectories, (c) identifying differences in later life health between people with different work-family life course trajectories, and (d) exploring to what extent the detrimental effect of poor childhood circumstances on later life health can be explained by variation in life course trajectories. Second, an objective measure of health was used as the outcome variable: allostatic load. Allostatic load refers to the ‘wear and tear’ of the body caused by hormonal responses to stressful situations. An index of allostatic load is generated from a set of biomarkers, i.e. objectively measured health characteristics. Many social science studies on later life health, in contrast, use self-reported health measures that may be prone to reporting bias, the extent of which may vary across sociodemographic groups.
Outputs
Papers
- Van den Broek, T. (2021). Early-life circumstances, health behavior profiles and later-life health in Great Britain. Journal of Aging and Health, 33(5-6), 317-330.
