Childhood socioeconomic circumstances predict specific causes of death in adulthood: the Glasgow student cohort study: Table 1

2][3] In a recent review we found some evidence that, compared with studies using contemporaneous measures of childhood exposures, those studies relying on recalled childhood information in adulthood tend to report less consistent or weaker associations with adult mortality. 2A new analysis of the Kuopio study using historical records of childhood socioeconomic circumstances finds higher mortality risk among those who experienced worse circumstances in childhood 4 that was not found when only recalled childhood socioeconomic position (SEP) was available. 5Thus, using contemporaneously collected measures of childhood SEP seems to provide better estimates of the true association with later disease.Furthermore, the effect of childhood socioeconomic circumstances varies according to specific causes of death, which may suggest specific mechanisms or time periods of susceptibility.However, few current cohorts have both contemporaneous measures of early life SEP and sufficient number of deaths to carry out such detailed analysis.We have previously reported a higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality with lower childhood SEP in the Glasgow student cohort study. 6However, the number of deaths did not allow for analysis of more specific causes of death.As we now have longer follow up and more events we have investigated the association between childhood SEP and specific causes of death.