Hungry children age faster

Ana Lucia Abeliansky and Holger Strulik

No 322, University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics from University of Goettingen, Department of Economics

Abstract: We analyze how childhood hunger affects human aging for a panel of European individuals. For this purpose, we use six waves of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) dataset and construct a health deficit index. Results from log-linear regressions suggest that, on average, elderly European men and women developed about 20 percent more health deficits when they experienced a hunger episode in their childhood. The effect becomes larger when the hunger episode is experienced earlier in childhood. In non-linear regressions (akin to the Gompertz-Makeham law), we obtain greater effects suggesting that health deficits in old age are up to 40 percent higher for children suffering from hunger. The wedge of health deficits between hungry and and non-hungry individuals increases absolutely and relatively with age. This implies that individuals who suffered from hunger as children age faster.

Keywords: health; aging; health deficit index; hunger episodes; childhood health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I19 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-eur and nep-hea
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Journal Article: Hungry children age faster (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:cegedp:322

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