Heterogeneity in Childhood Residential Mobility Trajectories

Welcome to a CEDAR seminar with Juste Lekstyte, Center for Demographic Studies (CED), Barcelona. 

All interested are welcome to participate. If you want to participate digitally, please contact Mojgan Padyab to receive a meeting link.

Heterogeneity in Childhood Residential Mobility Trajectories: Implications for Adult Preventative Healthcare Use

Short abstract:
Preventive healthcare is one of the foundations of good health and well-being. It not only helps people live longer and healthier lives, but it can also reduce healthcare costs at the national level. Factors such as poverty, parental separation, and residential instability can significantly disrupt the development of preventive health behaviours from an early age.

Residential mobility, in particular, has been shown to disrupt relationships with healthcare providers and lead to delays or difficulties in accessing new services. However, previous studies often treat residential mobility as a uniform experience, failing to consider the diversity in residential patterns, including the frequency, timing, and distance of moves, as well as the socioeconomic context of neighbourhood changes. Additionally, there has been limited focus on the long-term effects of residential mobility on the use of preventive healthcare.

This study uses Swedish register data on children born between 1990 and 1993 to examine how different residential mobility trajectories during childhood are associated with preventative healthcare utilisation in adulthood, measured by potentially avoidable hospitalisations. Using sequence analysis, I identified ten distinct mobility trajectories, capturing variation in timing, frequency, and socio-spatial context of moves. Using logistic regression, I find that residential mobility in childhood is linked to lower engagement with preventive healthcare in adulthood, reflected in higher risks of potentially avoidable hospitalisation. However, the impact of mobility depends on the type and pattern of moves, with frequent movers being most vulnerable. The socio-spatial context of moves matters as well, even in the case of upward mobility.