“The results of our analysis refer to people who would now be elderly, and they wouldn’t necessarily be the same for later generations,” said Tiago Silva Alexandre, last author of the article.

The researchers analyzed the participants’ answers to questionnaires about many aspects of their lives, including family structure, housing, the head of household’s occupation, the presence of infectious diseases, and relationships with parents in childhood and adolescence, especially care and protection.

“It would be incorrect to attribute the higher risk of early death to a past event without considering the presence of diseases and problems in old age.

We therefore controlled for these variables, and analyzed the correlations involving factors present in a subject’s childhood with premature mortality regardless of their health in old age,” he said.

According to Canelada, women are apparently more likely to internalize negative emotions and more frequently suffer from mental disorders, while men are more subject to alcohol and drug abuse.

Independently of one’s current characteristics, having worse socioeconomic status and health in childhood or adolescence increased the risk of early mortality in men.