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We examine the effects on adult and old age mortality of childhood living arrangements and other aspects of family context in early life. We focus on features of family context that have already been shown to be associated with infant or child mortality in historical and developing country populations. We apply discrete-time event-history analysis to longitudinal, individual-level household register data for a rural population in northeast China from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Loss of a mother in childhood, a short preceding birth interval, and high maternal age were all associated with elevated mortality risks later in life. Such effects persist in a model with fixed effects that account for unobserved characteristics of the community and household. An important implication of these results is that in high mortality populations, features of early life family context that are associated with elevated infant and child mortality may also predict adverse mortality outcomes in adulthood. KeywordsChina; early life; mortality; family; historical; life course; childhood Before the twentieth century, high levels of adult mortality meant that loss of one or both parents in childhood was a common experience. According to a variety of studies carried out in historical European and Asian populations, recent loss of a parent was associated with a substantial elevation in infant or child mortality (Beekink, van Poppel & Liefbroer 1999Breschi & Manfredini, 2002; Campbell & Lee, 2002, 318;Högberg & Bröström, 1985;Tsuya & Kurosu, 2002). While the specific mechanisms underlying this relationship have yet to be delineated, possibilities include reduced consumption associated with the loss of a caregiver and household laborer, physiological effects of psychological stress, or a common disease environment or genetic endowment that raised the mortality risks of parents and children.We examine the long-term mortality consequences of the loss of a parent and other features of childhood family context that have been shown or suggested to affect infant and child mortality Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. in historical populations and contemporary developing countries. These include short preceding birth interval, birth order, family size, and maternal age. Based on the existing literature on associations between childhood conditions and health and mortality at later ages, we hypothesize that features of early life family context already known to be associated with elevated infant and child mortality in high mortality populations may also have implications for h...

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"Through a discrete-time life-event analysis of triennial household register data from a northeast Chinese village, Daoyi, between 1774 and 1873, we find that an individual's probability of dying, which we treat as an indicator of access to resources and the nature of household roles, was affected by the composition of their coresident kin.... Widows and widowers had higher mortality than the currently married. Orphans had higher mortality than children with at least one parent present. Reflecting the dependence of a wife's status on whether she had produced an heir for her husband, married women in young adulthood and middle age who had at least one son had substantially lower mortality than those without. Reflecting the strength of the claim that elderly males could make on household resources, children with coresident grandfathers had higher mortality than those without. Even though sons were supposed to be a form of old-age security, however, the death rate of the elderly was not reduced by the presence of sons and grandsons."