Socioeconomic position (SEP) is associated with morbidity and mortality across all stages of the life course, whereby those from disadvantaged backgrounds have poorer health outcomes.1–5 Acknowledging the importance of one’s SEP throughout the life course enables us to ascertain when the exposure has the most effect and where interventions can be focused.

Social mobility, i.e. movement from one social class to another, can also affect an individual’s health. Many studies have investigated the relationship between social mobility and mortality in later life in Sweden.6–14In most of these studies, individuals who were downwardly mobile had higher mortality than those who were always advantaged, but not necessarily more so than individuals who were always disadvantaged,7,9,11–13 suggesting that cumulative class experience can have a more profound impact on health than childhood or adulthood SEP.15 Moreover, some studies have observed that being upwardly mobile leads to higher mortality8,9,11 while other studies have shown that upward mobility is protective against mortality.14,16 Thus, being socially mobile, regardless of direction, can affect an individual’s health.

Although there have been many studies investigating the effect of social mobility on mortality in Sweden, most studies measured SEP at only two time points6,7,10–14 and have employed a more traditional methodological approach. One recent study, based on the same cohort as used in this study, measured SEP at four time points with an aim to identify what time period is most important for the effect of SEP on mortality.17 However, none of the previous studies have performed latent class analyses when investigating the relationship between SEP and mortality across the life course. The latent class procedure employs a ‘person-centered’ modeling strategy, which might be particularly useful for the identification of distinct trajectories of individuals sharing a common socioeconomic profile over time.18,19

Using data from the first generation of the Uppsala Birth Cohort Multigenerational Study (UBCoS Multigen),20 we aimed to explore the relationship between latent class trajectories of SEP and mortality.