The scars of the past? Childhood health and health differentials in later life

This study estimates multilevel mixed effects models of three retrospective measures of childhood health – self-rated childhood health, exposure to parental smoking growing up, and missing school for 30 or more consecutive days due to a health event – on levels and changes in physical functioning at age 50 and beyond. Using data from 15 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, the results show that variation in the level of later-life physical functioning is associated with childhood health. Poor childhood health however is not associated with the rate of physical functioning decline. Respondents who reported poor childhood health and were migrants to Australia from a non-English speaking country reported better physical functioning in later life, compared with non-Indigenous Australian-born respondents who reported poor childhood health. In contrast, women who reported poor self-rated childhood health reported worse physical functioning compared with men who reported poor self-rated childhood health. These findings are robust to the inclusion of a range of measures of childhood and adult characteristics and circumstances. These results suggest that Australia, with arguably a strong and supportive health care system as compared with the U.S., may mitigate the accumulation of disadvantages to those who reported poor childhood health. We note that though functional health differences due to childhood health are not exacerbated in later life, neither are they eliminated.