London, Dec 8 (IANS) People with a history of childhood delinquency are more likely to die or become disabled by the time they are 48, says a new study.
The study is the first to examine how a wide range of early anti-social behaviours, as well as parental factors, affect various health outcomes 40 years later.

For instance, among boys who engaged at age of 10 in anti-social activities, bunking classes or being rated troublesome or dishonest, and who went on to be convicted of a crime by 18, one in six had died or become disabled by the age of 48.

That compared with one in 40 of the boys from the same lower socio-economic neighbourhood who were not delinquent or offenders — an almost seven-fold difference.

“We were surprised to see such a strong link between these early influences and premature death,” said study leader Jonathan Shepherd, professor and director of the Violence and Society Research Group at Cardiff University, Wales.

“This indicates that things that happen in families at age eight to 10 are part of a progression towards dying prematurely,” added Shepherd.

“At this point, we don’t know exactly why delinquency increases the risk of premature death and disability in middle age, but it seems that impulsivity - or lack of self-control - in childhood and adolescence was a common underlying theme,” Shepherd said.

The research is the latest update of a long-running study called the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development that started following 411 boys at the age of eight or nine to investigate the influences on, evolution and long-term consequences of juvenile delinquency.

The study started in 1961 and follow-up investigations were performed at ages 16-18, 27-32 and 43-48. By the time of the latest follow-up, 389 of the men were still in the study.

A total of 17 men had died by the age of 48 and 17 of the remaining 365 men followed had become disabled. Of 21 potentially important influences, six were significantly associated with premature death and disability, the researchers found, said a Cardiff release.

These findings were published in the December issue of the Journal of Public Health.