scholarly journals Childhood Circumstances and Adult Outcomes: Act II

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 1360-1446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Almond ◽  
Janet Currie ◽  
Valentina Duque
Keyword(s):  
Early Life ◽  
Child Outcomes ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Long Term Outcomes ◽  
Fetal Origins ◽  
Production Technologies ◽  
Postnatal Environment ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The Life Course

That prenatal events can have life-long consequences is now well established. Nevertheless, research on the fetal origins hypothesis is flourishing and has expanded to include the early childhood (postnatal) environment. Why does this literature have a “second act?” We summarize the major themes and contributions driving the empirical literature since our 2011 reviews, and try to interpret the literature in light of an overarching conceptual framework about how human capital is produced early in life. One major finding is that relatively mild shocks in early life can have substantial negative impacts, but that the effects are often heterogeneous reflecting differences in child endowments, budget constraints, and production technologies. Moreover, shocks, investments, and interventions can interact in complex ways that are only beginning to be understood. Many advances in our knowledge are due to increasing accessibility of comprehensive administrative data that allow events in early life to be linked to long-term outcomes. Yet, we still know relatively little about the interval between, and thus about whether it would be feasible to identify and intervene with affected individuals at some point between early life and adulthood. We do know enough, however, to be able to identify some interventions that hold promise for improving child outcomes in early life and throughout the life course. (JEL I12, J13, J16, Q51, Q53)

scholarly journals Early-life circumstances and the risk of function-limiting long-term conditions in later life

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-180
Author(s):  
Matthew H. Iveson ◽  
Chris Dibben ◽  
Ian J. Deary
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Functional Limitation ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Socio Economic Status ◽  
Childhood Cognitive Ability ◽  
The Life Course

Older adults are particularly prone to function-limiting health issues that adversely affect their well-being. Previous work has identified factors from across the life course –childhood socio-economic status, childhood cognitive ability and education – that predict later-life functional outcomes. However, the independence of these contributions is unclear as later-in-the-life-course predictors are themselves affected by earlier ones. The present study capitalised on the recent linkage of the Scottish Mental Survey 1947 with the Scottish Longitudinal Study, using path analyses to examine the direct and indirect associations between life-course predictors and the risk of functional limitation at ages 55 (N = 2,374), 65 (N = 1,971) and 75 (N = 1,534). The odds of reporting a function-limiting long-term condition increased across later life. At age 55, reporting a functional limitation was significantly less likely in those with higher childhood socio-economic status, higher childhood cognitive ability and higher educational attainment; these associations were only partly mediated by other predictors. At age 65, adult socio-economic status emerged as a mediator of several associations, although direct associations with childhood socio-economic status and childhood cognitive ability were still observed. At age 75, only childhood socio-economic status and adult socio-economic status directly predicted the risk of a functional limitation, particularly those associated with disease or illness. A consistent pattern and direction of associations was observed with self-rated health more generally. These results demonstrate that early-life and adult circumstances are associated with functional limitations later in life, but that these associations are partly a product of complex mediation between life-course factors.

scholarly journals Nutritional genomics: a practical approach by early life conditioning with dietary phosphorus

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (suppl spe) ◽  
pp. 268-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Ashwell ◽  
Roselina Angel
Keyword(s):  
Early Life ◽  
Metabolic Disorders ◽  
Epidemiological Data ◽  
Dietary Manipulation ◽  
Fetal Origins ◽  
Fetal Origins Hypothesis ◽  
Dietary Phosphorus ◽  
In Utero Environment ◽  
Nutritional Genomics

The recent technologies that have led to the new field of functional genomics (how the genome of an organism regulates homeostasis and responds to stimuli) are providing a clearer understanding of how organisms interact with their environment and in particular their diet. We are beginning to learn how the diet may have long-term influence on performance and health. A form of epigenetic regulation has been recently described called fetal "programming". Fueled by epidemiological data the "fetal origins" hypothesis suggests that a poor in utero environment resulting from maternal dietary or placental insufficiency may "program" susceptibility in the fetus to cardiovascular or metabolic disorders. We have observed similar apparent programming by dietary manipulation in the chicken. When birds are challenged with a diet low in phosphorus (P) for 90 hours post-hatch they obtain the ability to better utilize P later in life. This increased retention of P from the diet can partially be explained by an enduring increase in the expression of the intestine-specific Na/P cotransporter (NaPcoT) gene during programming as well as later in life when fed P restricted diets. The resulting data provide the first evidence for neonatal programming of gene expression in an oviparous species.

Transgenerational Transmission of Stress Pathology

2015 ◽  
Vol 223 (3) ◽  
pp. 181-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarete Bolten
Keyword(s):  
Life Stress ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Early Life Stress ◽  
Long Term Outcomes ◽  
Gene Environment ◽  
Stressful Experiences ◽  
Rats And Mice ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Identical Gene

Abstract. The impact of the environment early in life on long-term outcomes is well known. Stressful experiences during pre- and postnatal development can modulate the genetic programming of specific brain circuits underlying emotional and cognitive aspects of behavioral adaptation to stressful experiences later in life. Furthermore, there is documented evidence for gene-environment interactions in the context of early-life stress. Identical gene variants can be associated with different phenotypes depending on environmental factors. DNA methylation, an enzymatically-catalyzed modification of the DNA, is the mechanism through which phenotypes are regulated. The dynamics and plasticity of epigenetic mechanisms can have short-term, long-term, or transgenerational consequences. In epigenetic research, rodent models have targeted several behavioral and emotional phenotypes. These models have contributed significantly to our understanding of the environmental regulation of the developmental brain in early life. This review will highlight studies with rats and mice on epigenetic processes in fetal programming of stress-related mental disorders.

scholarly journals The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment

2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (4) ◽  
pp. 855-902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raj Chetty ◽  
Nathaniel Hendren ◽  
Lawrence F. Katz
Keyword(s):  
College Attendance ◽  
High Poverty ◽  
Long Term Outcomes ◽  
Housing Vouchers ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
Single Parenthood ◽  
Moving To Opportunity ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
New Evidence

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment offered randomly selected families housing vouchers to move from high-poverty housing projects to lower-poverty neighborhoods. We analyze MTO's impacts on children's long-term outcomes using tax data. We find that moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood when young (before age 13) increases college attendance and earnings and reduces single parenthood rates. Moving as an adolescent has slightly negative impacts, perhaps because of disruption effects. The decline in the gains from moving with the age when children move suggests that the duration of exposure to better environments during childhood is an important determinant of children's long-term outcomes. (JEL I31, I38, J13, R23, R38)

scholarly journals Molecular Evidence for Differential Long-term Outcomes of Early Life Severe Acute Malnutrition

EBioMedicine ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 274-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Sheppard ◽  
Sherry Ngo ◽  
Xiaoling Li ◽  
Michael Boyne ◽  
Debbie Thompson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Life ◽  
Severe Acute Malnutrition ◽  
Acute Malnutrition ◽  
Molecular Evidence ◽  
Long Term Outcomes

scholarly journals Child Protection and Child Outcomes: Measuring the Effects of Foster Care

2007 ◽  
Vol 97 (5) ◽  
pp. 1583-1610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph J Doyle
Keyword(s):  
Foster Care ◽  
Juvenile Delinquency ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Instrumental Variable ◽  
Child Outcomes ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Teen Motherhood ◽  
Long Term Outcomes

Little is known about the effects of placing children who are abused or neglected into foster care. This paper uses the placement tendency of child protection investigators as an instrumental variable to identify causal effects of foster care on long-term outcomes—including juvenile delinquency, teen motherhood, and employment—among children in Illinois where a rotational assignment process effectively randomizes families to investigators. Large marginal treatment effect estimates suggest caution in the interpretation, but the results suggest that children on the margin of placement tend to have better outcomes when they remain at home, especially older children. (JEL H75, I38, J13)

Long term effects of abuse in early life on depression and anxiety over the life course

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (8) ◽  
pp. e28
Author(s):  
Jutta Lindert ◽  
Ondine von Ehrenstein ◽  
Marc Weisskopf
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Depression And Anxiety ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
The Life Course
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