Early parental death and being not in education, employment, or training (NEET-status) in Norway: a population-wide study on the moderating role of parental education.

Childhood parental death has been linked to adverse young adult outcomes, potentially influenced by family background. This study quantifies the association between parental death during childhood and NEET-status (not in education, employment, or training) in young adulthood, focusing on the moderating role of parental education. Causes of death were leveraged to explore the extent of confounding in the relationship between parental death and NEET-status. The study utilized Norwegian registry data from birth cohorts 1977-87 (574 229 individuals). We identified individuals with and without the experience of parental death between ages 0-17 and tracked their NEET-status between ages 22-29. Poisson regression models estimated incidence risk ratios for NEET years based on parental death, parental education, their interaction, and control variables. To address confounding, causes of death were categorized as more exogenous (i.e. neoplasms) or more endogenous (e.g. suicide or drug-related deaths). Early parental death and lower parental education were both linked to more years in NEET status. Incidence risk ratios varied by cause of death, ranging from 1.19 for neoplasms [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.13-1.25] to 2.36 for drug-related causes (95% CI: 2.17-2.56). Lower parental education amplified the association between NEET-status and parental death from most causes, but to the smallest extent for neoplasms. The association between parental death and NEET status was stronger among individuals with parents with lower parental education. When the cause of death was unrelated to parental education, the modifying effect of parental education was smaller, suggesting that stronger associations in low-education families may largely reflect confounding factors.