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Advancing paternal age and offspring violent offending: A sibling-comparison study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2012

Ralf Kuja-Halkola ,
Yudi Pawitan ,
Brian M. D'Onofrio ,
Niklas Långström  and
Paul Lichtenstein
Ralf Kuja-Halkola*
Affiliation:
Karolinska Institutet Centre for Violence Prevention National Prison and Probation Agency, R&D Stockholm
Yudi Pawitan
Affiliation:
Karolinska Institutet
Brian M. D'Onofrio
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Niklas Långström
Affiliation:
Karolinska Institutet Centre for Violence Prevention National Prison and Probation Agency, R&D Stockholm
Paul Lichtenstein
Affiliation:
Karolinska Institutet
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Ralf Kuja-Halkola, Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, P.O. Box 281, Stockholm 171 77, Sweden; E-mail: ralf.kuja-halkola@ki.se.
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Abstract

Children born to older fathers are at higher risk to develop severe psychopathology (e.g., schizophrenia and bipolar disorder), possibly because of increased de novo mutations during spermatogenesis with older paternal age. Because severe psychopathology is correlated with antisocial behavior, we examined possible associations between advancing paternal age and offspring violent offending. Interlinked Swedish national registers provided information on fathers' age at childbirth and violent criminal convictions in all offspring born from 1958 to 1979 (N = 2,359,921). We used ever committing a violent crime and number of violent crimes as indices of violent offending. The data included information on multiple levels; we compared differentially exposed siblings in within-family analyses to rigorously test causal influences. In the entire population, advancing paternal age predicted offspring violent crime according to both indices. Congruent with a causal effect, this association remained for rates of violent crime in within-family analyses. However, in within-family analyses, we found no association with ever committing a violent crime, suggesting that factors shared by siblings (genes and environment) confounded this association. Life-course persistent criminality has been proposed to have a partly biological etiology; our results agree with a stronger biological effect (i.e., de novo mutations) on persistent violent offending.

Type
Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 24 , Issue 3: Multilevel Approaches Toward Understanding Antisocial Behavior: Current Research and Future Directions , August 2012 , pp. 739 - 753
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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