The results of a study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine support the findings of two other studies, included in July’s issue of the journal Pediatrics; all three studies said that prematurely delivered babies are more likely to encounter social-oriented problems.

This week’s study compiled data about one million Norwegians with ages ranging from 20 to 36 and found that social status greatly differs depending on the timing of the delivery. The later the babies are born, the more likely they are to get married, have children and get well paid jobs.

Dr. Dag Moster, a neonatologist at the Haukeland University Hospital and lead author of the study, said there were two possible views of the results.

The pessimistic one would consist in the demonstration of the connection between a decreased gestational age and a wide range of medical disabilities, and for the cases with no disabilities, the occurrence of a series of social-related problems.

The optimistic view would be that most preterm survivors do not show serious medical disabilities and "seem to function very well as adults."

The study’s data referred to more than 900,000 birth defect free infants, born between the years 1967 and 1983 in Norway. While 40 weeks is considered to be a full-term gestation period, 1,822 individuals in the study were born after gestation periods ranging from 23 to 27 weeks, another 2,805 were delivered after 28 to 30 weeks and 7,424 after 31 to 33 weeks. About 33,000 were born after 34 to 36 weeks and the rest had gestation periods varying from 37 to 40 weeks.