Lifetime Disadvantages after Childhood Adversity: Health Problems Limiting Work and Shorter Life

Abstract

We examine how childhood adversity relates to work disability and life expectancy, using 1999 to 2015 data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We estimate the probabilities of work disability and death, adjusting for age, sex, race/ethnicity, and education in a nationally representative sample of African American, Hispanic, and white women and men. We find that people in all these groups who experienced high-adversity childhoods (individuals with four or more of six adversity indicators) had significantly more work disability and shorter lives than those who experienced no adversity. These findings provide evidence that childhood adversity is associated with substantial disability and a reduction in life expectancy of at least a decade. Childhood adversity was generally associated with more lost years of life for men than for women, and more disability for women than for men. The results are robust, even when controlling for diabetes, heart disease, depression, obesity, and sedentary behavior.