The Long Shadow of the Past: Early-Life Disease Environment and Later-Life Mortality

Hamid Noghanibehambari () and Jason Fletcher
Additional contact information
Hamid Noghanibehambari: University of Texas at Austin

No 16503, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: A recently growing literature evaluates the influence of early-life conditions on life-cycle health and mortality. This paper extends this literature by estimating the associations between birth-state infant mortality rates experienced during early-life (as a proxy for general disease environment, health-care access, and nutrition) and life-cycle mortality rates. Using the universe of death records in the US over the years 1979-2020 and implementing two-way fixed effect models, we find that a 10 percent rise in birth-state infant mortality rate is associated with about 0.23 percent higher age-specific mortality rate. These correlations are more concentrated in ages past 50, suggesting delayed effects of early-life exposures. Moreover, we find substantially larger correlations among nonwhites, suggesting that the observed racial disparities in mortality can partly be explained by disparities in early-life conditions. Further, we provide empirical evidence to argue that reductions in education, income, and socioeconomic scores are likely mechanism channels.

Keywords: mortality; infant mortality; early-life exposures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 J13 N31 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2023-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hea and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16503.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16503

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().