Comparing Observed and Unobserved Components of Childhood: Evidence From Finnish Register Data on Midlife Mortality From Siblings and Their Parents

Abstract

In this study, we argue that the long arm of childhood that determines adult mortality should be thought of as comprising an observed part and its unobserved counterpart, reflecting the observed socioeconomic position of individuals and their parents and unobserved factors shared within a family. Our estimates of the observed and unobserved parts of the long arm of childhood are based on family-level variance in a survival analytic regression model, using siblings nested within families as the units of analysis. The study uses a sample of Finnish siblings born between 1936 and 1950 obtained from Finnish census data. Individuals are followed from ages 35 to 72. To explain familial influence on mortality, we use demographic background factors, the socioeconomic position of the parents, and the individuals' own socioeconomic position at age 35 as predictors of all-cause and cause-specific mortality. The observed part-demographic and socioeconomic factors, including region; number of siblings; native language; parents' education and occupation; and individuals' income, occupation, tenancy status, and education-accounts for between 10 % and 25 % of the total familial influence on mortality. The larger part of the influence of the family on mortality is not explained by observed individual and parental socioeconomic position or demographic background and thus remains an unobserved component of the arm of childhood. This component highlights the need to investigate the influence of childhood circumstances on adult mortality in a comprehensive framework, including demographic, social, behavioral, and genetic information from the family of origin.

The changing contribution of childhood social characteristics to mortality: a comparison of Finnish cohorts born in 1936–50 and 1961–75

“…We take the sibling intraclass correlation to be a summary measure of all early life influences, both observed and unobserved, that are shared by siblings, 6 thus reflecting shared genetic and social influences. The ‘mestreg’ command in Stata 14.2 was used for the estimation and ‘nlcom’ command for obtaining the 95% confidence intervals for the sibling correlation.…”

Interpreting mutual adjustment for multiple indicators of socioeconomic position without committing mutual adjustment fallacies

“…It demonstrates how, in some instances, adjustment for some socioeconomic confounders may be sufficient to block confounding from other more distal and unmeasured aspects of socioeconomic background, and give greater confidence that effect estimates from a proximal measure of SEP are causal. On the other hand, we have shown how estimates of direct effects for more distal measures of SEP can be biased by residual unmeasured confounding [35], and/or collider bias [17]. Where there is the likelihood of residual unmeasured confounding (i.e.…”

“…Nevertheless, many studies have used regression-based models where SEP measures are mutually adjusted [13, 15, 16, 22, 24, 25, 30, 31], and it is not hard to find even very recent examples e.g. see [32–35]. We focus therefore on explaining best practice for such models, highlighting potential interpretative pitfalls and their implicit assumptions and limitations.…”

“…Given how broad the concept of SEP is, there are likely to be aspects of SEP not fully captured by any particular set of measures used [23, 35]. Thus, it is important to consider how interpretations might be affected by unmeasured socioeconomic information (or other unmeasured confounders, which would affect interpretation in a similar way).…”

Life expectancy and parental education

“…Only few studies combine these two strands of the literature. Based on administrative data, either the highest educational level of parents is considered (Elo, Martikainen, & Myrskylä, 2014;Kröger, Hoffmann, Tarkiainen, & Martikainen, 2018), or only the education of the father (Tarkiainen, Martikainen, Laaksonen, & Aaltonen, 2015). Some studies include parental education in mortality analyses, but do not report their coefficients (Bijwaard, Myrskylä, 4 Tynelius, & Rasmussen, 2017;Bijwaard, Tynelius, & Myrskylä, 2018).…”