Social
Examining the relationship between involuntary residential moves from ages 0 to 5 years and mortality through adulthood in a national, population-based cohort study Taylor M. Mobley* Taylor Mobley Mobley Mobley Mobley Mobley UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology
Although many studies document negative health effects of involuntary residential moves in childhood, few studies have examined their lifecourse health consequences. We examined the relationship between involuntary moves between ages 0-5 years and mortality from childhood into adulthood in a national population-based sample. This analysis included children of Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) families who entered the study between 1969-2021. Additionally, we required that children were between ages 0-5 at baseline and remained in the study at age 6 (N = 21,416). Involuntary moves between ages 0-5 (e.g., evictions, parental divorce, etc.) were defined by the PSID research team based on the head of household’s self-reported primary reason for moving between waves, measured annually from 1968-1997, and biennially thereafter, and categorized as 0, 1, or 2+. Year of death up to 2023 was obtained from PSID staff, family members, and death certificates. We estimated 5-year interval risk ratios (RRs) and differences for death after 10 years of follow-up from inverse probability of treatment-weighted (IPTW) Kaplan-Meier curves using time on study as the timescale. IPTWs included age at baseline, sex, birth year, and parental race and ethnicity. We estimated 95% confidence intervals (CIs) with 500 bootstraps. A total of 453 deaths were observed over a mean follow-up of 22 years. About 83% of the sample experienced 0, 14% experienced 1, and 3% experienced 2+ involuntary moves between ages 0-5. Risk of mortality at 30 and 50 years of follow-up was higher for participants who experienced 2+ vs. 0 involuntary moves on both scales, but estimates were imprecise (RR (95% CI): 1.6 (0.5-2.9) at 30 years and 1.3 (0.7-2.2) at 50 years). In future work, we plan to measure time-varying effects of involuntary moves on mortality across the lifecourse.
