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Early Life Conditions and Later Life Inequality in Health

ISBN: 978-1-78190-553-1, eISBN: 978-1-78190-554-8

Publication date: 30 December 2013

Abstract

Prenatal exposure to adverse conditions is known to affect health throughout the life span. It has also been shown that health is unevenly distributed at advanced ages. This chapter investigates whether health inequalities at old age may be partially caused by prenatal circumstances. We use a sample of people aged 71–91 from eight European countries and assess how shocks in GDP that occurred while the respondents were still in utero affect four important dimensions of later-life health: cognition, depression, functional limitations, and grip strength. We find that early-life macro-economic circumstances do not affect health at advanced ages, nor do they affect inequalities in health. In additional analyses, we show that the least healthy people may not enter our sample as the probability of dying before reaching age 71 is high, and mortality rates among those who were prenatally exposed to adverse GDP shocks are higher. We conclude that selective mortality may mask effects of early-life circumstances on health and health inequality at old age.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

This chapter uses data from SHARE wave 4 release 1, as of November 30, 2012. The SHARE data collection has been primarily funded by the European Commission through the 5th Framework Programme (project QLK6-CT-2001-00360 in the thematic programme Quality of Life) through the 6th Framework Programme (projects SHARE-I3, RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE, CIT5-CT-2005-028857, and SHARELIFE, CIT4-CT-2006-028812) and through the 7th Framework Programme (SHARE-PREP, N° 211909, SHARE-LEAP, N° 227822 and SHARE M4, N° 261982). Additional funding from the U.S. National Institute on Aging (U01 AG09740-13S2, P01 AG005842, P01 AG08291, P30 AG12815, R21 AG025169, Y1-AG-4553-01, IAG BSR06-11 and OGHA 04-064) and the German Ministry of Education and Research as well as from various national sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www.share-project.org for a full list of funding institutions).

Citation

Lindeboom, M. and van Ewijk, R. (2013), "Early Life Conditions and Later Life Inequality in Health", Health and Inequality (Research on Economic Inequality, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 399-419. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1049-2585(2013)0000021019

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited