Project description
The role of social inequality in miscarriage risk and consequences
The spontaneous loss of pregnancy, that is, miscarriage before 24 weeks of gestation, affects around 25 % of women and may cause mental and physical health problems. Although stress due to financial conditions or high-pressure jobs may increase the risk of a miscarriage, the role of social inequalities in this risk has rarely been investigated. Similarly, we know little about the social parameters that affect the mental and physical well-being of women following a miscarriage. Funded by the European Research Council, the SOC-MISC project aims to address this gap in knowledge using data from registers and surveys in Finland, France and the United Kingdom. The aim is to use these results to improve population health.
Objective
One in four women experience a miscarriage. Loss of pregnancy may affect fertility intentions and lead to adverse mental and physical health. Yet, we know little about how social inequalities affect the risk of miscarriage; how miscarriages may exacerbate existing social inequalities in population health; or how context shapes these experiences. One reason for this is poor quality of data, as miscarriages are often either underreported in surveys or only included in health registers if they require hospital care. Moreover, to date, sexual and reproductive health has often been ignored in life course epidemiology.
This proposal goes beyond the state-of-the-art by being the first comprehensive study of the patterns of social inequality in miscarriage and its outcomes. It reaches this goal by assessing the patterns of miscarriage underreporting in surveys before obtaining its estimates. It will make ground-breaking contributions by:
1) Analysing underreporting patterns of miscarriage and using this in further analyses to obtain more reliable results than before.
2) Showing how individual and family-level social inequalities affect miscarriage risk over the life course.
3) Establishing how mental and physical health consequences of miscarriage depend on one’s social background and may widen social inequalities in health.
4) Uncovering the role of national and sub-national context in social inequalities in miscarriage.
Unlike many previous studies based on small and outdated samples, I use longitudinal population registers and large representative surveys in Finland, France and the UK that are exceptionally rich in miscarriage, socioeconomic, other reproductive and health data, and can be triangulated to obtain more reliable results.
The project will lead to a significantly better understanding of a common reproductive experience affecting mental and physical wellbeing, and can help policy makers improve reproductive and population health.
Fields of science
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic healthepidemiology
- social sciencessociologydemographyfertility
- social sciencessociologysocial issuessocial inequalities
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencessocial biomedical sciencessexual health
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineobstetrics
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC)Host institution
93322 Aubervilliers Cedex
France