Register data provide a reliable data source to conduct societally relevant research on minorities and hard-to-reach populations such as individuals with a disability. Current research, however, focuses mainly on single disabilities defined through the ICD-10 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems) classification, thereby lacking a comprehensive overview of populations with a disability. This study aims to extend this narrow and specific perspective on disability by conceptualising a framework to categorise three macro-types of physical, intellectual or sensory disabilities in linked individual-level register data. This novel approach will contribute to the literature by providing a methodological tool to comprehensively identify individuals with a disability from a young age. This study will use various register-based data sources from the Finnish population registers, i.e., medical care use, social security insurance utilisation and school curricula information, to first establish a new identification strategy for the three macro-types of physical, intellectual or sensory disabilities; second, assess identification similarities and divergences from the conventional ICD-10 classifications; and third, identify overlaps between these categories and other co-morbidities. The newly developed framework will enable population-based research on individuals with a disability, paving the way to providing insights into universal trends in this population across several life course domains. It will, therefore, make a substantial contribution to the field of disability studies and the broader disciplines of social epidemiology and demography.

Family ties are a fundamental dimension of individuals’ lives which might mitigate or exacerbate individual health disadvantage. In contrast to natives, who have a social and cultural advantage to navigate life-course adversities, immigrants need to make integrative efforts that are often entirely on their side, or on a limited family network. Family ties may mitigate these negative effects. Among the different types of family ties, a particular important role for health is played by spouses. Exogamous marriage, defined as marriage between people of different geographical origin, is often overlooked as a health determinant. Although the research on intermarriage is rich, not enough attention has been paid by scholars to the relationship between exogamous marriage and health of the spouses. Our aim is to fill this knowledge gap. We hypothesize that immigrants married to natives display better health outcomes compared to immigrants married to immigrant spouses; that the better health conditions are explained by the socioeconomic characteristics of the partner and that this relationship will hold after accounting for socioeconomic conditions prior to marriage. We use register-based longitudinal data on Finland to analyze the association between the place of birth of the spouse and inpatient and specialized outpatient care records. We focus on individuals aged 18-59 and their spouses (of any age), and we study men and women separately. Preliminary results for men show an increased risk of being hospitalized for psychopathological conditions for Finnish men married to immigrant women, which is fully explained by the sociodemographic controls included in the analyses, and a decreased risk for immigrant men married to immigrant women, that persists when considering the socio-demographic controls. Next steps include a detailed analysis by countries of birth, and a focus on the role of income.

Background: Social inequality is demonstrated in most health outcomes, yet the influence of socioeconomic status on reproductive health, such as timing of puberty, is debated. Early puberty is a risk indicator for adult diseases, emphasizing the need to determine potential causes of earlier puberty timing. The aim of this study was to investigate how parental socioeconomic position were associated with timing of puberty in girls and boys.

Methods: We studied 7890 girls and 7489 boys from a population-based Puberty Cohort nested within the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC). Highest completed educational level among parents was used as the indicator of socioeconomic status. Information on pubertal development was obtained every six months throughout puberty. We estimated mean monthly differences for the average age at attaining multiple pubertal milestones using multivariable interval-censored regression model.

Pre-liminary results: When analyzing all pubertal milestones simultaneously, the pubertal milestones were on average attained earlier in girls of low-grade professional parents (-0.7 months [95% confidence interval (CI): −1.6; 0.2]), skilled parents (-1,4 (95% CI: −2.3; −0.4) and unskilled parents (-2,7 (95% CI: −3.8; −1.6) compared with girls of high-grade professional parents. Boys of unskilled parents attained the pubertal milestones earlier (-1,2 (95% CI: −2.3; −0.1) compared to boys of high-skilled professionals, but no clear association was observed for boys of low-grade professional or skilled parents.

Conclusion: The results of our analysis indicate that lower parental socioeconomic status is associated with earlier timing of puberty in both girls and boys.

Menarche (the first occurrence of menstruation) is an event with critical importance in women’s fertility and fecundity. Growing evidence suggests a shift in the social gradient in age at menarche (AAM): While advantaged children used to experience menarche relatively early, this pattern now appears to have reversed in some Western societies. This observation raises an intriguing possibility that AAM could be one axis by which social inequalities reproduce, as early menarche may increase the risks of certain diseases and reduce opportunities for attaining higher education. As yet, it is unclear whether the social gradient in AAM has indeed changed in recent cohorts, and if so, whether socioeconomic differences actually underlie the change in AAM across generations.

The present study uses a unique compilation of cohort data linked to Norwegian register data and censuses: 85,000 female respondents from the Cohort of Norway, and 100,000 mothers and their daughters from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study. We document a secular trend of declining AAM throughout the 20th century, but unlike previous studies from the US and UK, we do not find a positive social gradient in AAM by income for earlier cohorts. In recent birth cohorts born 2002-2007, AAM further declined and the social gradient therein increased. Using first differencing regressions, we find stronger decline in AAM in daughters compared to their mothers if the mother grew up in household with lower socioeconomic position (0.19 years difference between the top and bottom percentile; CI 0.07-0.30), and also if the daughter's socioeconomic position is worsened compared to that of the mother during her own childhood (0.15 years if the position drops from the top to the bottom percentile; CI 0.06-0.26). These findings will be expanded by incorporating information on parental education, and additional cohort data for recent birth cohorts.