Residential mobility and urban-rural residence within life stages related to health risk and chronic disease in Tecumseh, Michigan.

Residential history, diagnosis of three chronic diseases, five clinical measurements and histories of smoking and drinking were obtained from a sample of 615 women and 529 men, aged 35-69, randomly selected from respondents of the Tecumseh Community Health Study. Two measures of residential mobility and one of urban-rural residence, during early life stages and over the entire lifetime, were related to subsequent adult health traits. Greater residential mobi- lity, particularly in childhood but also in later life, was significantly associated with greater prevalence of hypertension and higher mean diastolic blood pressure in older persons. Greater duration of urban residence was associated with greater prevalence of chronic bronchitis. Both residential traits were associated with greater prevalence of CHD, and with behavior patterns, namely cigarette smoking and drinking, that are risk factors for certain chronic diseases. A GENERAL awareness by professionals and laymen of the association between states of health and disease and usual frequent and infrequent life events has generated increased activity in recent decades seeking to substantiate these observations by systematic scien- tific research. Most frequently studies have related selected acute or chronic diseases, morbidity in general and mortality to particular life events or an index of life events experienced in some recent defined interval. These studies have had mixed success there- by stimulating further research in the quest for better definitions of the events, their stressful attributes and their systematic associations with specific health states. The fol- lowing report is from one of a series of such studies. This research is a continuation of the longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses of the relationships between the psychosocial aspects of ordinary life experiences and health status of participants in the Tecumseh Community Health Study. In an earlier paper Cl), childhood experiences of social incongruities or discontinuities, as expressed by residen- tial mobility, parental deprivation and parental status incongruities occurring 30-60 yr ago, were related to current adult health status variables comprised of selected health risk factors and prevalence of certain chronic diseases. Among these experiences, only childhood residential mobility was found to be significantly associated with certain health variables and only consistently among women members of the adult population studied. In the present report, the analyses were carried further to assess whether inconguities experienced at a later period in life and cumulatively over the life span were associated with adult health status. The incongruities were represented by two kinds of measures, residential mobility in time periods subsequent to the earliest and added to the earliest for total cumulative experience and secondly, by proportion residential time in urban or rural environments at various periods of life and cumulatively over the total life span. Answers to three questions were sought. First, was mobility in the early adult period and