Childhood neighborhoods and health in later Life : Hospital admissions in Sweden 1939-2015

Summary, in English

We study the association between childhood neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) (ages 1-15) and hospitalization with preventable-type disease in adulthood, using geocoded longitudinal microdata for a Swedish city (1939-1967) linked to national registers (1973-2015). Observing the full residential histories at the address level for the entire population, we construct dynamic and cumulative individual neighborhoods and measure SES of parents to similarly-aged neighboring children. In the nationwide follow-up, we measure later-life health (age group 45-54) using information on hospital admissions grouped by disease preventability. Our findings show that growing up in the highest-status neighborhoods lowers the risk of hospital admission in adulthood for men, but not for women. The associations do not differ by preventability and persist after including a range of control variables. The findings demonstrate the importance of childhood neighborhood conditions for health throughout the life course.

• Author: Finn Hedefalk; Ingrid Kirsten van Dijk; Martin Dribe
• Department/s: Department of Economic History; Centre for Economic Demography; EpiHealth: Epidemiology for Health
• Publishing year: 2025-06-04
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Social Science & Medicine
• Volume: 381
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118301
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Topic: Economic History
• Status: Published
• Project: The long reach of the neighborhood: Health, education and earnings in Landskrona, Sweden, 1904-2015; Wallenberg Scholar (Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation); Socioeconomic Segregation – The Impact of Neighborhoods, Schools and Policy Across the Life Course
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1873-5347