Health in childhood and muscular strength on European grown up adults

Abstract

 The present study evaluates the association between self-reports of childhood health with adult grip strength, estimating how both different socioeconomic indicators along the life course and adult health behaviors may affect such association. It has a longitudinal and retrospective design based on 2 848 65 years old and older individuals from 10 European countries, who had participate in the first (2004/05) and fourth (2011/12) waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (share), together with retrospective data on childhood conditions, provided in the third wave (sharelife; 2008/09). By means of linear regression, we estimate several models of increased complexity. We found that poor childhood health is associated with lower grip strength later in life, even after adjusting for all predictors, while trajectories in grip strength were not associated to childhood health. Our results are in line of the existing evidence about the importance of good childhood health early in life as an important predictor of adult health, suggesting that efforts in improving health in childhood may have additional benefits in promoting independence later in life.