Educational Inequalities Among Adolescents with a Parent Diagnosed with Heart Disease: A Danish National Register...

The foundation for future educational and job opportunities is laid during the crucial years of primary education. Navigating them while a parent has heart disease adds a potential stressor. We investigated whether childhood experience of parental heart disease was associated with I) primary and secondary education completion, and II) grade point average (GPA) in primary education.

This national register study included adolescents from the Danish Fertility Register born between 1979 and 2003. Through the National Patient Register adolescents were linked with their parents who either had ischaemic heart disease, arrhythmia, heart failure or heart valve disease. Statistical analyses included descriptive statistics, multivariate logistic and linear regression models. The population consisted of 102,829 adolescents with at least one parent diagnosed with heart disease. The matched reference population included 411,311 children without parental heart disease. Having a parent with heart disease was associated with lower odds of not completing primary education (OR: 0.56, 95% CI 0.52;0.62), corresponding to absolute risks of 0.6% among exposed and 1.9% among unexposed adolescents, and a lower GPA (estimate: -0.10, 95% CI: -0.12; -0.08) compared to peers. Parental ischaemic heart disease was associated with higher odds of not completing secondary education (OR: 1.31, 95% CI 1.17;1.47).

Exposure to parental heart disease was associated with lower odds of non-completion of primary education and slightly lower GPA, with small absolute differences, and showed no overall association with secondary education completion. Adolescents with a parent diagnosed with ischaemic heart disease had a lower completion of secondary education. These findings indicate diagnosis-specific differences in educational outcomes, with an overall limited impact on educational completion.