Being Born Under Adverse Economic Conditions Leads to a Higher Cardiovascular Mortality Rate Later in Life: Evidence Based on Individuals Born at Different Stages of the Business Cycle

Gerard J. van den Berg, Doblhammer-Reiter, Gabriele () and Kaare Christensen ()
Additional contact information
Doblhammer-Reiter, Gabriele: University of Rostock
Kaare Christensen: University of Southern Denmark

No 3635, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: We connect the recent medical and economic literatures on the long-run effects of early-life conditions, by analyzing the effects of economic conditions on the individual cardiovascular (CV) mortality rate later in life, using individual data records from the Danish Twin Registry covering births since the 1870s and including the cause of death. To capture exogenous variation of conditions early in life we use the state of the business cycle around birth. We find a significant negative effect of economic conditions early in life on the individual CV mortality rate at higher ages. There is no effect on the cancer-specific mortality rate. From variation within and between monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs born under different conditions we conclude that the fate of an individual is more strongly determined by genetic and household-environmental factors if early-life conditions are poor. Individual-specific qualities come more to fruition if the starting position in life is better.

Keywords: longevity; genetic determinants; health; recession; life expectancy; cardiovascular disease; cancer; lifetimes; fetal programming; cause of death; developmental origins (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 J14 C41 H75 E32 J10 N33 N13 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Date: 2008-08
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://ftp.iza.org/dp3635.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Being born under adverse economic conditions leads to a higher cardiovascular mortality rate later in life: evidence based on individuals born at different stages of the business cycle (2008)
Working Paper: Being born under adverse economic conditions leads to a higher cardiovascular mortality rate later in life – evidence based on individuals born at different stages of the business cycle (2008)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3635

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 for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Address: IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Mark Fallak ().