Explaining the social gradient in smoking in pregnancy: Early life course accumulation and cross-sectional clustering of social risk exposures in the 1958 British national cohort

Nick Spencer

Social Science & Medicine, 2006, vol. 62, issue 5, 1250-1259

Abstract: Smoking in pregnancy is a major determinant of low birthweight and a range of adverse infant health outcomes. There is a well-established social gradient in smoking in pregnancy in the US and northern Europe. Social gradients in health-related behaviours may result from longitudinal accumulation and cross-sectional clustering of social risk exposures. There is, however, no published confirmation of this explanation in empirical data with smoking in pregnancy as the outcome. This study aimed to test the effects of longitudinal accumulation and cross-sectional clustering of social risk exposures on smoking in pregnancy using data on the first pregnancies of 3163 female members of the 1958 British national cohort. Social class at birth and aged 11 years was used to create three dichotomous variables representing cumulative social class (both manual, one manual and one non-manual, both non-manual) early in the lifecourse. Cross-sectional clustering of social risk was represented by four dichotomous variables created from combinations of maternal age (

Keywords: Pregnancy; smoking; Social; gradient; Cumulative; social; risk; Cross-sectional; clustering; of; social; risk; UK (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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