Adverse childhood experiences, such as poverty, family instability, and parental separation, can have an enduring impact on a person’s health and development. Identifying these effects can help inform policies, programs, and personalized interventions to optimize outcomes for children who have experienced adverse events.
Previous research on these links has focused mainly on negative mental health or social outcomes, including suicide attempt, risky sexual behavior, and violence. Most of these studies rely on retrospective data that are reported by adults later in life. Studies also tend to focus on the number of adverse events or a single type of adversity despite children often experiencing several distinct types of difficulties simultaneously.
In a study led by Dr. Jing Yu in NICHD’s Social and Behavioral Sciences Branch, researchers addressed knowledge gaps by evaluating prospective data that were collected during early childhood from more than 46,000 people. The team was specifically interested in long-term effects of early adversity on mortality through middle adulthood. They identified common patterns of exposure to early childhood adversities, and they found the following:
- Childhood poverty combined with crowded housing was associated with a 41% higher risk for premature death.
- Early poverty combined with separation from a parent was associated with a 50% increase in premature death.
- Those who experienced parental harshness and neglect had a 16% higher risk of premature death.
- Those who experienced family instability had a 28% higher risk for premature death.
The results can help us better understand the long-term ramifications of early childhood experiences on health and well-being, and contribute to the efforts to develop better interventions that can both reduce exposure to childhood adversity and promote long-term health of children who experienced adversity.
Learn more about the Social and Behavioral Sciences Branch: https://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/org/dir/dph/officebranch/sbsb
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