Month of birth influences survival up to age 105+: first results from the age validation study of German semi-supercentenarians

Gabriele Doblhammer, Rembrandt D. Scholz and Heiner Maier
Additional contact information
Gabriele Doblhammer: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Rembrandt D. Scholz: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Heiner Maier: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2005-004, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: Using data from Germany, we examine if month of birth influences survival up to age 105. Since age reporting at the highest ages is notoriously unreliable we draw on age-validated information from a huge age validation project of 1487 alleged German semi-supercentenarians aged 105+. We use month of birth as an exogenous indicator for seasonal changes in the environment around the time of birth. We find that the seasonal distribution of birth dates changes with age. For 925 age-validated semi-supercentenarians the seasonality is more pronounced than at the time of their births (1880-1900). Among the December-born the relative risk of survival from birth to age 105+ is 16 per cent higher than the average, among the June-born, 23 per cent lower. The month-of-birth pattern in the survival risks of the German semi-supercentenarians resembles closely the month-of-birth pattern in remaining life expectancy at age 50 in Denmark.

JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2005-004.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:dem:wpaper:wp-2005-004

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2005-004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Wilhelm ().