IJE Advance Access originally published online on January 30, 2006
International Journal of Epidemiology 2006 35(3):658-663; doi:10.1093/ije/dyl011
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Life Course Epidemiology |
Height at age 18 years is a strong predictor of attained education later in life: cohort study of over 950 000 Swedish men
1 Department of Genetics and Pathology, Rudbeck laboratory, Uppsala University, Sweden
2 Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
3 Present address: Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
* Corresponding author. Child and Adolescent Public Health Epidemiology Group, Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute, Norrbacka, SE-17176 Stockholm, Sweden. E-mail: finn.rasmussen{at}ki.se
Background Adult body height has been related to socioeconomic position in cross-sectional studies. Intelligence, shared family factors, and non-familial circumstances may contribute to associations between height and attained education, but their relative importance has been difficult to resolve.
Methods A nation-wide record-linkage cohort study of over 950 000 Swedish men born 1950–75 followed with respect to attained education for up to 27 years after measurement of height at age 18 (baseline). The association between height and attained education in later life was investigated by logistic regression modelling with adjustment for age, geography, parental socioeconomic position, and cognitive ability. Shared family factors were accounted for in analyses of full-brother-pairs using conditional logistic regression.
Results The odds ratio (OR) for attaining higher education 7–27 years after baseline was 1.10 [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.09–1.10] in fully adjusted models per 5 cm increase in height. Men taller than 194 cm were two to three times more likely to obtain a higher education as compared with men shorter than 165 cm. The association remained within brother-pairs, OR 1.08 (95% CI 1.07–1.10), suggesting that non-familial factors contribute to the association between height and education attainment. A significant interaction (P < 0.0001) was found between year of birth, height, and attained education, showing slightly weaker associations among later birth cohorts.
Conclusions The strong positive association between height and educational achievement remaining after adjustment for year of birth, parental socioeconomic position, other shared family factors, and cognitive ability may reflect educational discrimination based on height although residual confounding cannot be ruled out.
Keywords Adult height, education, intelligence, socioeconomic factors, heritability, discrimination
Accepted 10 January 2006
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  B. Galobardes, J. Lynch, and G. Davey Smith Measuring socioeconomic position in health research Br. Med. Bull., February 6, 2007; (2007) ldm001v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 D. Vagero and B. Modin Commentary: The associations between height, cognition, and education and their relevance for health studies Int. J. Epidemiol., June 1, 2006; 35(3): 663 - 664. [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|