Poverty, parenting and poor health

There is a considerable amount of evidence that early years’ and childhood experiences can have profound and long-lasting consequences for health and wellbeing in later life. As a result, it has been suggested that differences in such experiences may explain, or partly explain, the high levels of 'excess' mortality seen in Scotland (and especially in Glasgow and West Central Scotland) compared with other parts of the UK.

This report seeks to examine this issue by means of descriptive analyses of early years’ and childhood experiences between Scotland and England, and between the three 'city regions' of Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Glasgow and the Clyde Valley. The analyses are based on data from four cohort studies of children born in Britain in 1946, 1958, 1970 and 2000, and supplemented by examination of routine data and other large scale surveys.

The descriptive analyses form the first phase of research using these data. Further work will extend the analyses to examine, and quantify, longitudinal associations between childhood and early years' experiences and adult morbidity and mortality in Scotland, England and the three regions.