Martin Dribe

The socioeconomic health gradient has widened since the mid-21st century, but the role of childhood neighborhoods remains underexplored. Most neighborhood studies on health are cross-sectional, and longitudinal research is lacking.

We analyze how socioeconomic neighborhood conditions in childhood influence cause-specific deaths in adulthood. We use uniquely detailed geocoded longitudinal microdata for the Swedish town of Landskrona, 1939-1967, linked to Swedish national registers, 1968-2015. We measure neighborhood SES by social class and use dynamic sizes of individual neighborhoods. Cox proportional hazards models are employed to estimate the impact of neighbor’s social class in childhood (ages 1-17) on mortality in ages 40-69. We control for class origin, class in adulthood, schools, and physical neighborhood characteristics.

The class of the nearby, same-age, childhood neighbors had a lasting effect on male all-cause and preventable, but not non-preventable, mortality. Men who grew up with having 10% more children from white-collar families as close-proximity neighbors had an 8% lower mortality risk due to preventable causes of death in adulthood. The mortality for women was not affected by their childhood neighbors, although both a lower adult class and class origin increased their mortality.

Because preventable causes of death are linked to lifestyle factors, this study highlights the potential lasting influence of childhood neighborhood peers on the health behavior of men growing up before the health gradient was fully established. Hence, our applied life-course perspective on childhood neighborhoods is crucial to better understand the mortality differentials by SES.