Socioeconomic differentials

Abstract

Abstract Socioeconomic differentials in mortality from many causes of death are seen in adulthood. There has been a long tradition of considering early life influences which contribute to this, but more recently the specific contribution of adverse socioeconomic conditions in infancy and childhood on cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality in adulthood has been investigated. Risk appears to accumulate over the life course, and independent contributions of childhood and adulthood socioeconomic circumstances to coronary heart disease incidence in adulthood are seen. Since exposures acting across the life course, together with the interactions between socially patterned exposures acting at different stages of life, contribute to disease risk, studies which have data concerning only one period of the life course are inadequate for further advancing our understanding of both disease aetiology and the production of socioeconomic differentials in health.