Premature babies are more likely to be less intelligent, do worse at school and end up in lower-paid jobs than those born at full term, new research shows.
An analysis of the circumstances of more than 15,000 British adults also found that those born prematurely are much more likely to become unemployed, be less wealthy and not own a house.
The findings, from research led by Prof Dieter Wolke of Warwick university, are significant because they show that people being born prematurely are more likely to suffer financial as well as health consequences.
Wolke and his colleagues looked in detail at how two cohorts of children born between 28 and 42 weeks in 1958 and 1970 fared in adulthood. In both groups, premature babies had usually accumulated fewer qualifications and less wealth by the age of 42 than full-term peers.
My obvious thought was that premature birth is associated with lower socio-economic status anyway. But equally obviously, the paper must have corrected for that, right?
And yet I can’t help worrying about some of this medical research that discusses socio-economic status. Because quite famously the Marmot Report din’t make the obvious point. Yes, low socio-economic status can indeed cause health problems. But equally, health problems can cause low socio-economic status. And yet there wasn’t even an admission of the latter in that report.
So, anyone want to have a look at this paper and see if they’v taken into account the known correlation between prematurity and socio-economic status?