Parental death during childhood and violent crime in late adolescence to early adulthood: a Swedish national cohort study

Lisa Berg (), Mikael Rostila, Arzu Arat and Anders Hjern
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Lisa Berg: Stockholm University
Mikael Rostila: Stockholm University
Arzu Arat: Stockholm University
Anders Hjern: Stockholm University/Karolinska Institutet

Palgrave Communications, 2019, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Childhood parental death has been associated with adverse health, social and educational outcomes. Studies on long-term outcomes are in general scarce and there is little evidence on the long-term impact on anti-social behaviour. This study takes advantage of high-quality register data to investigate risk of violent crime in relation to childhood parental death in a large national cohort covering the entire Swedish population born in 1983–1993 (n = 1,103,656). The impact of parental death from external (suicides, accidents, homicides) and natural causes on risk for violent crime from age 15 to 20–30 years, considering multiple aspects of the rearing environment (including parental psychiatric disorders and criminal offending), was estimated through Cox regression. Unadjusted hazard ratios associated with parental death from external causes ranged between 2.20 and 3.49. For maternal and paternal death from external causes, adjusted hazard ratios were 1.26 (95% confidence intervals: 1.04–1.51) and 1.44 (95% confidence intervals: 1.32–1.57) for men, and 1.47 (95% confidence intervals: 1.05–2.06) and 1.51 (95% confidence intervals: 1.27–1.78) for women. With the exception of maternal death among women (hazard ratio 1.26, 95% confidence intervals: 1.03–1.53), parental death from natural causes was not associated with increased risks in adjusted models. The results underscore the importance of preventive interventions to prevent negative life-course trajectories, particularly when death is sudden and clustered with other childhood adversities.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1057/s41599-019-0285-y

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