Parental socioeconomic position, childhood poverty and healthy aging: retrospective and prospective study of six cohorts across 32 wealthy and developing nations.

Background and aim: Children who were poor in wealthy countries have reported worse cognitive, muscle, and mental functions, as well as greater frailty and multimorbidity, in later life. However, it remains unclear whether those who were poor in childhood worldwide fall short of healthy aging, as information on childhood conditions is often unreliable. Here, I present new evidence on the lifecourse shaping of healthy aging among older adults worldwide. Methods: Some 80,000 older adults aged 50 and over in 32 wealthy and developing nations recalled their childhood conditions at ages 10-14 and then prospectively reported their health functioning. By the decade's end, these countries will host more than half (53%) of the world population aged 60 years and over, according to the United Nations. Following recent empirical studies, a modified healthy aging scale is constructed using a generalized latent trait model. Childhood conditions in England and Europe include the number of books, rooms, and people (indicating overcrowding), the presence of running hot water, and the presence of central heating. Across America, these are mostly replaced with financial hardship or family indebtedness; in China, starvation to death due to government edict; and in Indonesia, the presence of running cold water. As in prior practice, childhood poverty is treated as a latent construct underlying these error-prone recollections. Its associations with the modified healthy aging scale are estimated using country fixed-effects regression, controlling for parental socioeconomic position, age, sex, education, wealth, and marital status. Extensive sensitivity analyses assess robustness. Results and discussion: Childhood poverty is associated with reduced healthy aging by 0.14 standard deviations (