The Long-Arm of Early Life Conditions on Cardiovascular Risk in Old Age

Early Life Circumstances and the Health of Older Adults: A Research Note

“…Specific childhood risk factors include health endowment at birth and early life (Xiao et al 2008;Smith et al 2012;McGovern 2014;Stowasser et al 2014;Gong et al 2015;Wang and Shen 2016;Kendig et al 2017;Wang et al 2018), disease infections (Case and Paxson. 2009), access to healthcare (Zeng et al 2007;Liu et al 2019), parental SES (Zhang et al 2008;Wen and Gu 2011;Shen and Zeng 2014;Gong et al 2015;Zhang et al 2018b;Zhang and Crimmins. 2018;Adhvaryu et al, 2019), adversity (Yang and Lou 2016;Tian et al 2018), urban residence (Zhang et al 2018b), neighborhood safety and cohesion (Lin and Chen 2021), nutritional status (Huang and Elo.…”

Understanding Health and Social Challenges for Aging and Long-Term Care in China

“…A large and growing body of research has suggested that in utero and childhood risk factors may contribute to health in later life. These risk factors, including poor health in childhood ( Gong et al, 2015 ; Kendig et al, 2017 ; Wang & Shen, 2016 ; Wang et al, 2018a ), limited access to healthcare ( Zeng et al, 2007 ), low parental socioeconomic status ( Zhang & Crimmins, 2018 ), childhood adversities ( Tian et al, 2019 ; Yang & Lou, 2016 ), low residential mobility ( Xu et al, 2019 ), malnutrition ( Zhang et al, 2018a ), lack of social support ( Zhang et al, 2018 ), low education and cognitive stimulation ( Langa & Larson, 2014 ), unfavorable sibling sex-composition such as daughters growing up in families with sons ( Huang & Elo, 2009 ), and negative parent-child relationship ( Zhang et al, 2018 ), have been found to contribute to individuals’ susceptibility to mental health problems, chronic diseases, functional and cognitive impairment, and premature death in China. The association between mid-life lifestyle factors and late-life physical and mental health status has also been established ( Lafortune et al, 2016 ; Sun et al, 2009 ; Tyas et al, 2003 ).…”