The Consequences of Chronic Pain in Mid-Life: Evidence from the National Child Development Survey

David Blanchflower and Alex Bryson

No 21-28, DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London

Abstract: Using data from all those born in a single week in 1958 in Britain we track the consequences of short pain and chronic pain in mid-life (age 44) on health, wellbeing and labor market outcomes in later life. We examine data taken at age 50 in 2008, when the Great Recession hit and then five years later at age 55 in 2013. We find those suffering both short-term and chronic pain at age 44 continue to report pain and poor general health in their 50s. However, the associations are much stronger for those with chronic pain. Furthermore, chronic pain at age 44 is associated with a range of poor mental health outcomes, pessimism about the future and joblessness at age 55 whereas short-duration pain at age 44 is not. Uniquely, we also show that pain experienced in childhood, at ages 11 and 16, reported by a parent and a teacher respectively, collected decades earlier, predicts pain in mid-life, indicating just how persistent pain can be over the life-course.

Keywords: pain; mental health; general health; sleep; paid work; wellbeing; life-course; birth cohort; NCDS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hap, nep-hea, nep-isf and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec.ioe.ac.uk/REPEc/pdf/qsswp2128.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Consequences of Chronic Pain in Mid-Life: Evidence from the National Child Development Survey (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qss:dqsswp:2128

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London Quantitative Social Science, Social Research Institute, 55-59 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0NU. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr Neus Bover Fonts ().