Abstract
There is robust evidence that childhood circumstances are related to quality of life in older ages, but the role of possible intermediate factors is less explored. In this paper, we examine to what extent associations between deprived childhood circumstances and quality of life at older ages are due to experienced labour market disadvantage during adulthood. Analyses are based on the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), with detailed retrospective information on individual life courses collected among 10,272 retired men and women in 13 European countries (2008–2009). Our assumption is that those who have spent their childhood in deprived circumstances may also have had more labour market disadvantage with negative consequences for quality of life beyond working life. Results demonstrate that advantaged circumstances during childhood are associated with lower levels of labour market disadvantage and higher quality of life in older ages. Furthermore, results of multivariate analyses support the idea that part of the association between childhood circumstances and later quality of life is explained by labour market disadvantage during adulthood.
Highlights
Today’s older people will live longer than any previous generation in Europe
We study to what extent an association between childhood circumstances and quality of life can be explained by labour market disadvantage over working life
From detailed information on individual employment histories available in SHARELIFE we developed an index of labour market disadvantage, based on the following four items
Summary
In most European countries a 60-year-old woman or man can expect to live another 20 years, and in some of these even longer (Eurostat, 2013) This development is combined with the hope that the prolonged length of life is accompanied by good subjective quality of life. For many older women and men, longer lives do not lead to this positive scenario, but rather to prolonged periods of morbidity (Wahrendorf, Reinhardt, & Siegrist, 2013) and lower levels of quality of life (Niedzwiedz, Katikireddi, Pell, & Mitchell, 2014; von dem Knesebeck, Wahrendorf, Hyde, & Siegrist, 2007). Few life course studies address possible pathways and ask what intermediate factors may explain the association between early disadvantage and later quality of life. Those who have spent their childhood in deprived circumstances may have had particular employment histories and thereby been exposed to more labour market disadvantage over the life course, with long-term consequences for quality of life
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