Can Childhood Socioeconomic Background Explain Elevated Mortality among the Young Adult Second-Generation in Sweden?

Second-generation children of migrants represent one of the fastest growing and diverse young populations in many rich countries in the world today. In contrast with the lower mortality risk typically experienced by migrants, a growing body of work highlights a higher adult mortality risk in the second-generation. Previous studies have attempted to understand this reversal by studying its association with inequality in adult socioeconomic background (SEB). Here, we instead implement a life course perspective to examine its association with childhood SEB. We use Swedish register data to fit survival models on a dataset of 13,339 deaths among 2.4 million people aged between 16 and 41. We observe initial higher mortality among G2 with parent(s) born in Finland, Other Nordic countries, Fr. Yugoslavia, Rest of Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Northern Africa and Iran & Iraq. Their mortality risk is driven by high mortality from external causes. After adjusting for childhood SEB, higher all-cause mortality levels only persist in G2 with parent(s) born in Finland and Other Nordic countries. Additional analysis reveals that G2 with parent(s) born in Finland and Other Nordic countries show consistently higher mortality across all levels of parental disposable income. However, higher mortality in G2 with parents born in Fr. Yugoslavia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Northern Africa is instead limited to the upper end of the parental income distribution. Our findings reveal that childhood SEB is associated with higher adult mortality among the G2 in Sweden, although not always in a way we might expect.