Background The death of a young child is so devastating that it can increase the risk of mortality in the grieving parent. Little is known about the impact of an adult child's death on the health of parents. Methods The authors conducted a follow-up study between 1980 and 2002 based on a linked-registers database that contains the total Swedish population. The authors examined mortality from all causes, natural causes and unnatural causes among parents following the death of children aged 10–49 years. Results An increased mortality risk (RR 1.31, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.68) in mothers following the death of a minor child (10–17 years) was found and especially following unnatural deaths (primarily accidents and suicides). Mothers also experienced elevated mortality following the death of an adult child aged 18–25 years (RR 1.15, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.29). Bereavement effects among fathers were more attenuated and chiefly found after >8 years of follow-up. From a short-term perspective (1–3 years), the death of an adult child (>25 years) was somewhat protective for parents. However, over longer follow-up periods, it approached (4–8 years) and exceeded (>8 years) the death risk of the general population. Conclusions These findings corroborate and extend earlier findings suggesting elevated mortality risks also following the death of an adult child.

Previous findings have suggested that the loss of a family member is associated with mortality among bereaved family members. The least-studied familial relationship in the bereavement literature is that of siblings, although loss of a sibling may also involve health consequences. The authors conducted a follow-up study based on data from the Swedish total population register, covering the period 1981–2002. Using Cox regression, mortality risk ratios for bereaved and nonbereaved persons aged 18–69 years were estimated. All-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality (unnatural causes, natural causes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, suicide, accidents, and all other causes) were examined. In men, the mortality risk for bereaved persons versus nonbereaved persons was 1.26 (95% confidence interval: 1.22, 1.30), and in women it was 1.33 (95% confidence interval: 1.28, 1.39). An elevated mortality risk associated with a sibling's death was found in all age groups studied, but the association was generally stronger at younger ages and could be observed predominantly after more than 1 year of follow-up. There was also an increased mortality risk if the sibling had died from a discordant main cause, which may strengthen the possibility that the association observed is not due to confounding alone.

Preliminary evidence points to higher morbidity and mortality from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in certain racial and ethnic groups, but population-based studies using microlevel data are lacking so far. We used register-based cohort data including all adults living in Stockholm, Sweden, between January 31, 2020 (the date of the first confirmed case of COVID-19) and May 4, 2020 (n = 1,778,670) to conduct Poisson regression analyses with region/country of birth as the exposure and underlying cause of COVID-19 death as the outcome, estimating relative risks and 95% confidence intervals. Migrants from Middle Eastern countries (relative risk (RR) = 3.2, 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.6, 3.8), Africa (RR = 3.0, 95% CI: 2.2, 4.3), and non-Sweden Nordic countries (RR = 1.5, 95% CI: 1.2, 1.8) had higher mortality from COVID-19 than persons born in Sweden. Especially high mortality risks from COVID-19 were found among persons born in Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Socioeconomic status, number of working-age household members, and neighborhood population density attenuated up to half of the increased COVID-19 mortality risks among the foreign-born. Disadvantaged socioeconomic and living conditions may increase infection rates in migrants and contribute to their higher risk of COVID-19 mortality.

It has been suggested that welfare state characteristics are important for the creation of social trust and moreover that trust is related to health. However, the relationship between social capital and health has not previously been analysed from a welfare state perspective. This article therefore examines how welfare regimes, trust and self-rated health are related, primarily with multilevel logistic regressions. The findings suggest large variations in trust between European welfare regimes and a strong association between trust and health at population level. An association was also found between the post-socialist regime and individual health. This association persisted after adjustment for several confounders/mediators but turned non-significant after adjustment for contextual trust. This suggests that social trust might account for the association. The results further indicate that contexts with low trust, such as the post-socialist context, are somewhat more detrimental for the health of distrustful individuals. In overall terms, these findings suggest that contextual social trust could explain health differences between European welfare regimes.