2023/01/25 by Tiziana Leone, Heini Väisänen, Firman Witoelar
Health Professions · Medicine · Psychology · #Allostatic load #Birth, Development, and Health #Context (archaeology) #Demography #Environmental health #Fertility #Geography #Gerontology #Global Health Care Issues #Global Maternal and Child Health #Indonesian #Medicine #Population #Psychology #Quality of life (healthcare) #Reproductive health #Sociology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/00324728.2022.2160004
openalex publication_date 2023/01/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
We know little about the effects of the reproductive health burden in contexts where unsafe abortions, miscarriages, stillbirths, and low-quality maternal care are common. The aim of this study is to investigate the use of allostatic load to understand the impact of reproductive histories on later-life health. We applied path models to the Indonesian Family Life Survey with a sample of 2,001 women aged 40+. Although number of children was not associated with allostatic load, pregnancies not ending in live birth and parenthood before age 18 were both negatively associated with health. We also identified clear cohort and educational effects and a possible rural advantage. Our contribution is twofold: we highlight the importance of reproductive histories beyond live births on women's later-life health in a context of increasing population ageing, and we demonstrate the applicability of using allostatic load to measure health outside the Global North.