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Public health
Original research
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
  1. Brian Dodgeon1,
  2. Praveetha Patalay1,2,
  3. George B Ploubidis1,
  4. Richard D Wiggins1
  1. 1Centre for Longitudinal Studies, University College London Social Research Institute, London, Greater London, UK
  2. 2MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing, University College, London, Greater London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Brian Dodgeon; b.dodgeon{at}ucl.ac.uk

Abstract

Objectives We 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/participants Data 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 measures Our 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.

Results Using 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.

Conclusion Our 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.

  • mental health
  • public health
  • statistics and research methods
  • mid-life physical and emotional well-being
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-031416

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors BD performed the data management and structural equation modelling using the Mplus software, and took responsibility for completing all aspects of the paper. PP contributed to the conceptual planning of the analysis jointly with RDW, performed preliminary regression modelling and advised on aspects of the structural equation modelling (SEM) strategy. GBP advised on many aspects of the statistical analysis, and provided detailed comments on the drafting of the paper. RDW undertook the conceptual planning of the analysis jointly with PP, and initiated the SEM approach, continuing to provide advice on the models as they became more complex, and collaborating with BD on the write-up of the findings.

    • Funding Assistance is acknowledged from ESRC grants ES/M001660/1, ES/N003683/1 and ES/M008584/1.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Ethics approval Ethical approval was not required, since the study used the secondary data of the National Child Development Study, which itself had received ethics consent from the London Research Ethics Committee, ref 08/H0718/29 for its age 50 survey, the source of our outcome data. Multicentre Research Ethics Committee (MREC) approval was received for earlier NCDS surveys.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. The analysis is based on secondary data available for download from the UK Data Archive at https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/series/series?id=2000032. Syntax used to derive variables for this analysis can be obtained by e-mailing the corresponding author, Brian Dodgeon.