You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Workplace
Original Article
Childhood adversity, adult socioeconomic status and risk of work disability: a prospective cohort study
  1. Jaana I Halonen1,
  2. Mika Kivimäki1,2,3,
  3. Jussi Vahtera4,5,
  4. Jaana Pentti1,3,
  5. Marianna Virtanen1,
  6. Jenni Ervasti1,
  7. Tuula Oksanen1,
  8. Tea Lallukka1,3
  1. 1 Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland
  2. 2 Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London, UK
  3. 3 Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
  4. 4 Department of Public Health, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
  5. 5 Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
  1. Correspondence to Jaana I Halonen, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, PO Box 301, 70101 Kuopio, Finland; jaana.halonen{at}ttl.fi

Abstract

Objectives To examine the combined effects of childhood adversities and low adult socioeconomic status (SES) on the risk of future work disability.

Methods Included were 34 384 employed Finnish Public Sector study participants who responded to questions about childhood adversities (none vs any adversity, eg, parental divorce or financial difficulties) in 2008, and whose adult SES in 2008 was available. We categorised exposure into four groups: neither (reference), childhood adversity only, low SES only or both. Participants were followed from 2009 until the first period of register-based work disability (sickness absence >9 days or disability pension) due to any cause, musculoskeletal or mental disorders; retirement; death or end of follow-up (December 2011). We ran Cox proportional hazard models adjusted for behavioural, health-related and work-related covariates, and calculated synergy indices for the combined effects.

Results When compared with those with neither exposure, HR for work disability from any cause was increased among participants with childhood adversity, with low SES, and those with both exposures. The highest hazard was observed in those with both exposures: HR 2.53, 95% CI 2.29 to 2.79 for musculoskeletal disability, 1.55, 95% CI 1.36 to 1.78 for disability due to mental disorders and 1.29, 95% CI 1.20 to 1.39 for disability due to other reasons. The synergy indices did not indicate synergistic effects.

Conclusions These findings indicate that childhood psychosocial adversity and low adult SES are additive risk factors for work disability.

  • childhood adversity
  • cohort study
  • life course
  • socioeconomic status
  • work disability

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/oemed-2017-104319

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Additional material is published online only. To view please visit the journal online (http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/oemed-2017-104319)

    • Contributors JIH, MK, JV, JP and TL conceived and designed the experiments. JIH analysed the data. MK, JP, JV, MV, JE and TO contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools. MK, JV and TL contributed to the funding of the study. TL is the guarantor of the study. All authors were involved in writing the paper and approved the submitted and published versions.

    • Funding This study was supported by the Academy of Finland (grant numbers 287488 and 294096 for TL, 258598 and 292824 for MV & JE, and 267727 for JV). MK is supported by Nordforsk, the Nordic Programme on Health and Welfare, the Finnish Work Environment Fund, and the UK Medical Research Council (K013351). The funders had no role in the data collection, analysis or writing of the paper.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Responding was voluntary and data were analyzed in anonymized form.

    • Ethics approval The FPS cohort study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa, Finland.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.