Mortality, severe morbidity and injury among long-term lone mothers in Sweden

Being a lone mother often implies disadvantage in terms of both socioeconomic circumstances and health. Our aim was to examine differences in mortality, severe morbidity and injury between lone mothers and mothers living with partners, on the assumption that the disadvantaged socioeconomic circumstances contribute to poor health.

The odds for receipt of hospital care or death between 1991 and 1994 were estimated for 26 619 lone mothers and 379 855 partnered mothers from data collected for the Swedish Population and Housing Census of 1990. We computed odds ratios by means of logistic regression, adjusting for confounders, mediators, and factors with an indeterminate position in various models. To control for health-selection effects, we only considered initially healthy women, as measured by non-hospitalization 4 years prior to follow-up. To reduce the impact of distress following divorce on health, we only included mothers who had been either lone or partnered for a period of > or =5 years.

Lone mothers showed increased risks of total mortality, lung cancer, suicide/ suicide attempt, inflicted violence, traffic injury and other accident, psychiatric disease, and addiction. The main explanation for increased risks seems for most outcomes to lie in deficient household resources, as indicated here by receipt of social-welfare benefit and housing situation. For all the initially elevated outcomes, except for total mortality, significant risk increases remained unaccounted for even in the full model. Relationships varied according to subgroup. Lone motherhood was not related to accident, suicide and addiction among medium- and high-grade non-manual workers. Although lone mothers in general showed no increased risk of ischaemic heart disease, those receiving social benefit were exposed to a significantly increased risk.

Our findings suggest that lone motherhood entails health disadvantages. Lack of household resources seems to play a major role in accounting for increased risks, but the risks are partly independent of socioeconomic circumstances, selection factors, and distress following divorce.