Tiina Pensola: FROM PAST TO PRESENT: THE EFFECT OF THE  LIFECOURSE ON
MORTALITY, AND SOCIAL
CLASS DIFFERENCES IN MORTALITY IN MIDDLE ADULTHOOD XXXIX 2003 Supplement
Yearbook of
Population Research in Finland. Population Research Institute. ISBN
952-9605-98-6. 192 p. Price 20 Euros + postage.

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ABSTRACT:
Social class differences in mortality are larger in middle adulthood than
at any other time of life. Circumstances over the
lifecourse may contribute to these adult social class differences. However,
it is only rarely that the lifecourse approach has been
applied to mortality studies among persons in their middle adulthood. The
aim of this thesis is to disentangle the effects of the
living conditions in the parental home and major transition in youth on
social class differences in mortality from various causes of
death among women and men aged 31-42 at death, and to evaluate whether the
effect of the past circumstances on mortality is
through latency, accumulation or pathway mechanisms. This thesis (papers
II-V) is based on the 1990 census data for all
Finnish persons born in 1956-60 linked with death records (4369 deaths) for
1991-98 and with information on lifecourse
circumstances from the 1970, 1975, 1980 and 1985 censuses. These aggregated
cross-tables are analysed by means of
Poisson regression.
        Parental home had an association with disease mortality from age 20
onwards, indicating a latency effect. However, the
direct effect of the parental home on mortality was minor, and therefore
the contribution of latency model to differential
mortality remained small. An indication for the accumulative effect of
disadvantageous social class was found for cardiovascular
diseases and alcohol-related causes. The living conditions in the parental
home, i.e. the manual class and one-parent family, had
an effect on the transitions a person experienced in youth, and thus
contributed to the effect youth paths exerted on adult social
class differences in mortality from various causes of death. Youth paths
had a substantial effect (about 60-90%) over and
above the preceding effect of living conditions in the parental home on
mortality. The higher mortality in the lower social classes
was mainly attributable to disadvantageous educational path. Moreover, both
family formation, particularly early marriage in
women and staying single in men, and experience of unemployment in youth,
had independent effects on class differences in
mortality. These results strongly suggest that youth is a 'sensitive
period' affecting social class differences in mortality in middle
adulthood.

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