Childhood onset of migraine, gender, parental social class, and trait neuroticism as predictors of the prevalence of migraine in adulthood

•This was a longitudinal study following over 5000 British cohort members for 50 years.•Our interest was in socio-demographic and psychological correlates of migraine at age 50 years.•Parental social class, being female, childhood migraine, and higher trait neuroticism were associated with adult migraine.•Both socio-demographic and personality factors were significantly associated with the prevalence of adult migraine.

This study investigated the effects of socio-demographic and psychological factors in childhood and adulthood on the prevalence of migraine in adulthood using data from The National Child Development Studies (NCDS), a birth cohort in the UK. The analytical sample comprises 5799 participants with complete data. Logistic regression analysis showed that higher professional parental social class (OR = 2.0: 1.05, 3.86, p < 0.05), female sex (OR = 2.24: 1.68–2.99, p < 0.001), migraine in childhood diagnosed by physicians (OR = 1.76: 1.23–2.50, p < 0.01), and higher trait neuroticism (OR = 1.17:1.26-1.06, p < 0.01): < 0 were all significantly associated with the prevalence of migraine in adulthood. Both socio-demographic and personality factors were significantly associated with the prevalence of migraine in adulthood.