A history of bad behaviour in youth raises the risk of dying at a young age and not just from car crashes and drunken pub brawls, a new study suggests.

The finding comes from a UK study that followed 411 boys from South London in 1961 when they were either eight or nine years old.

Those who displayed antisocial behaviour at age 10 such as skipping school or being dishonest and were then convicted of a crime by the age of 18 had a one in six chance (16.3%) of being either dead or disabled before they 48.

This rate was nearly seven times higher than for men who weren’t in trouble during their youth, 2.6% of whom were dead or disabled by this stage.

Study leader Jonathan Shepherd, director of the Violence and Society Research Group at Cardiff University in Wales, said the researchers were surprised to see such a strong link between early influences and premature death.

And the increase wasn’t limited to substance abuse or other mental health problems known to be linked with an antisocial lifestyle, but “included premature death and disability from a wide variety of chronic illnesses such as heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and cancer,” he said.

The researchers are unsure why delinquency increases the risk of premature death but they noted that impulsivity (lack of self-control) was a common underlying theme.